Jersey Boys–From Pipe Dream to Reality
October 14th, 2007Barbara Vitello of the Daily Herald says it took more than three years from the time Frankie Valli and Bob Gaudio realized The Four Seasons story might make a better musical than TV film for Jersey Boys to become a reality.
“It was a pipe dream then,” Gaudio says, one of the original Four Seasons and the group’s primary songwriter. “At times we thought it would be impossible, but we stayed with it and here we are.
“Your gut instincts tell you that you have something, but it’s impossible to know,” he says, but the workshop production’s opening night in La Jolla, Calif., convinced him.
“Sometimes you can do no wrong,” Gaudio says. “This was one of those times.”
His hunch was confirmed in November, 2005 when Jersey Boys opened on Broadway where it went on to win four Tony Awards, including one for best musical.
The same year Jersey Boys made waves in New York, Dayton, Ohio, native Michael Ingersoll began making waves in Chicago. After relocating to the city with his wife, actress Angela Ingersoll, he did a few shows, including “I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change” at the Metropolis Performing Arts Centre in Arlington Heights and “tick, tick …BOOM” at Pegasus Players, for which he earned a Jeff Citation nomination. In her review of that show, a Chicago critic suggested he might want to learn the music to “Jersey Boys” and take a shot at the national tour. He followed her advice and won the role of the enigmatic Nick Massi on one of the national tours opening at Chicago’s LaSalle Bank Theatre today.
Read the entire story on the Daily Herald and check out the video of the Chicago Company on this link.
