March 15, 2008

What It’s Like to Play the Legendary Four Seasons

March 15th, 2008

Jersey Boys national tour previews Wednesday and opens Thursday at the Orpheum in Minneapolis. Rohan Preston of the Star Tribune notes the cast of Jersey Boys fretted about how pop icons Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons would react.

Preston spoke with JB national tour stars Christopher Kale Jones, who plays Frankie Valli, and Andrew Rannells, who plays Bob Gaudio, about portraying members of one of the most successful groups in pop music history. Along with the actors, the real Bob Gaudio shares his thoughts on the actors’ portrayals and the first time he heard his own hit, “Short Shorts” on the radio.

Not all the members of the Four Seasons are as widely known as Valli. Gaudio, for example, stopped singing in the early 1970s, concentrating on songwriting. He slid out of the spotlight, even though his career was still going strong. So when Andrew Rannells, who plays Gaudio in the show, started doing research, he found very little.

“There isn’t a lot of footage of him, so you have to piece together what kind of guy you think he is based on his bio,” said Rannells, 29. Luckily for him, Gaudio is the musical’s composer. “Once we got to the auditions and he started coming, that made it much more real and less intimidating.”

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