November 4, 2006

Jersey Boys National Tour Cast Updates

November 4th, 2006

Here are a few updates and stories on the JB National Tour Cast:

Eric Gutman: Jersey Boys national tour cast member Eric Gutman’s blog provides some interesting insight into what’s going on as he and his castmates prepare for the December national tour launch! Check it out!

Christopher Kale Jones: Honolulu Advertiser reporter Wayne Harada’s story highlights the life and career of Christopher Kale Jones, a Hawaii native who will be playing Frankie Valli in the national Tour of Jersey Boys.

Jones was born and raised in Hawaii, graduating from Hawaii Baptist Academy and Northwestern University, and he has Island theatrical credits, appearing in Army Community Theatre’s Grease (as Danny Zuko) and West Side Story and in the Castle Performing Arts Company’s Once on This Island during the Ronald Bright tenure. He also has Mainland stage credits, including Miss Saigon (playing Chris) for the Worcester Foothills Stages. His proud parents still live in Kailua.

The national tour is now in rehearsals in New York. A preview run begins Dec. 1, with a Dec. 10 launch at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco.

Deven May: NCTimes.com reporter Pam Kragen’s article on Deven May, who will be playing Tommy DeVito in the national tour of Jersey Boys, provides some details on the actor’s early career.

After graduating from high school in 1989, May honed his chops at the Moonlight Amphitheatre before heading to New York in the mid-1990s. In the early ‘90s, May headed to L.A. and landed a gig playing Barney Rubble in The Flintstones stage show at Universal Studios Hollywood. May originated the lead role in the world premiere of Bat Boy in 1997 in Los Angeles, and his funny/creepy performance earned him a 1998 Ovation Award as Best Lead Actor in a Musical.

From there, May performed for much of 2000 in an American adaptation of the French musical Notre Dame de Paris in Las Vegas. Then in 2001, he traveled to New York to reprise the Bat Boy role in an off-Broadway production that earned him a Theatre World Award and a Drama Desk nomination. He has since performed in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn at Connecticut’s Goodspeed Theatre among other shows, and is now in pre-production to star in a film version of Bat Boy, scheduled for 2007.

No Comments »

No comments yet.

RSS feed for comments on this post. | TrackBack URI

Please leave a comment