Jersey Boys at Bank of America Theatre
★★★☆☆
Bank of America Theatre. Book by
Marshall Brickman and Rick
Elice. Music by Bob Gaudio.
Lyrics by Bob Crewe. Dir. Des
McAnuff. With ensemble cast.
2hrs 35mins; one intermission.
When this jukebox biography of the Four Seasons opened its first Chicago production in 2007, after winning the Tony Award for best musical in 2006, I was underwhelmed, to say the least. It was pleasurable enough to hear the Seasons’ great hits, from “Sherry” to “Walk Like a Man,” re-created by talented impressionists with solid musical direction, but the storytelling struck me as sub–Behind the Music.
Given the chance for a second assessment with the national tour’s nine- week stop, I’m somewhat more won over. I still find Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book scenes to be lazy and hamfisted. Information is delivered almost solely via narration; interactions are built entirely of one-liners and cliché.
But pulling back from the trees to see the forest, I have to admire the book’s structure, which neatly splits the group’s rise and fall into four, yes, seasons, with narrating duties similarly divvied among the four Seasons. If their dialogue and transitions are clunky (and they are), Brickman and Elice do deserve credit for laying out the story in a way that efficiently and persistently drives us toward the next musical number, which really is the point. And those numbers are as polished as ever. The touring cast members sell them with all they’ve got, led by appealing, dark-eyed falsettoist Joseph Leo Bwarie as Frankie Valli and charming, baby-faced Preston Truman Boyd as songwriting Season Bob Gaudio.—Kris Vire
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