Jersey Boys Are Big Men in Town at Curran Theatre!
December 12th, 2006Examiner.com’s Leslie Katz remarks that toward the end of the Tony Award-winning musical “Jersey Boys,†as Frankie Valli sums up his life with the Four Seasons, the good times and the bad, he says, “All there was, was the music — that was the best.â€
The quote nicely applies to the actual show, an enjoyable history lesson telling the story of how some kids from a rough neighborhood in Jersey became one of the best-selling pop acts of the 1960s.
Even the characters in Jersey Boys themselves say that the group didn’t appeal to prominent people with worldly aspirations. Unlike the Beatles, the Four Seasons weren’t trying to save the world; they were playing songs for working folks who had dark circles under their eyes.
Therein lies another of the joys of Jersey Boys, which opened its national tour Sunday night at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. In addition to its roster of hit songs (anyone who listened to the radio in the ‘60s and ‘70s easily will know most of the insanely catchy tunes), the show reaches a real emotional tone, allowing each of the four guys in the group to tell his version of the story. It’s an excellent device, a clever structure put in place by first-time book writers Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who pack in historical details, everything from the guys’ stints behind bars or their extramarital affairs to the inspiration behind the songs.
Read Katz’s entire review on Examiner.com.
