June 22, 2008

Four Seasons’ Musical Rockin’ Audiences Everywhere!

June 22nd, 2008

Paul Lieberman of Vindy.com has posted an interesting feature on Jersey Boys, noting that each night The Four Seasons musical plays in one time zone or another–on Broadway, in Chicago, in London, in Vegas–and all over! In fact, there are so many incarnations of the show, or new ones in the works, that they have a “Frankie School” in New York to teach all the lead actors how to sing in the falsetto that anchored such chart-toppers as “Walk Like a Man,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).”

Each night, JB ends by informing the audience what became of the original Four Seasons: how bass player Nick Massi, always the afterthought (the “Ringo”) is dead now; and how bad boy Tommy DeVito lives in Vegas, supposedly exiled to its golf courses by the Mafia; and how their boy genius songwriter Gaudio gravitated to Nashville, passing days now on his yacht; and how Frankie Valli alone is still singing, “like that bunny on TV with the battery,” the show tells us. “Chasing the music.”

Of course, that’s a stage version of things, so a little theatrical license is expected. But there’s one big factor those sum-ups don’t take into account — what the show itself, and its success, has done to their lives.

You think Gaudio really is lounging on some lake with new “Jersey Boys” productions to launch around the world? “I’ve got a boat,” he says, “that I haven’t seen in two years.”

You think DeVito wields only a putter these days? Approaching his 80th birthday, he’s back in the recording studio with his guitar in hand.

Frankie? OK, true to his word, he’s still singing “Sherry.”

But he says, “I wish I could turn the worry button off.”

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