Niko Combitsis and Kory Fulton in Jersey Boys, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux
By Liz Nicholls,
All jukebox musicals are not created equal. And there’s a notable example, currently running at the Mayfield, that rises above the others the way Frankie Valli’s legendary falsetto levitates off the stage and into your brain.
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True, Jersey Boys, the Tony Award magnet of 2005, is here to revisit the impossibly contagious string of No. 1 hits by the ‘60s pop quartet The Four Seasons. And, sure enough, no matter what your age (can nostalgia be inherited?) the first notes of Sherry and Big Girls Don’t Cry and Walk Like A Man, planted in the public consciousness by those helium high notes, are still irresistible, still somehow connected to your shoulders and possibly your pulse. The Mayfield production directed by Jersey Boys expert Danny Austin, compressed in cast and stage size but not in music , conjures that distinctive Four Seasons sound impressively, before your very ears. The sound is where the hood opens with Jersey Boys.
And speaking of hoods (and ‘hoods)…. What you get with Jersey Boys is a kind of jukebox theatre triple threat: hit songs, a music industry trajectory — obscurity to Top-40 rise, setbacks, fall — and a compelling real-life story that adds rough-edged features like jail time, family breakdown, and the Mob to the slicker surfaces of the American Dream.
The extra lustre the songs get is that the story in which they’re embedded is actually true: four guys from the gritty Italian ‘hoods of blue-collar New Jersey c. 1962. Written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice and directed originally for Broadway by Des McAnuff, the early scenes in the flavourful script are all about members of the band-in-progress, always in and out of the slammer. The program comes with a Jersey language warning from co-writer Elice (“not the language you hear in church, or even in most Broadway shows”).
The hard-ass guitar player Tommy DeVito (Kory Fulton, who digs zestfully into the thuggish deadpan of the character), a break-and-enter specialist with a wit of his own, calls it “the Rahway Academy of the Arts.” The play is full of that kind of wit.
Which makes the design (by Douglas Paraschuk, with contributions by Ivan Siemens) — double-storey metal catwalks lighted glowingly, and sometimes luridly, by Kevin Fraser — entirely à propos. Whether characters are emerging from jail, meeting with mob enforcers or performing in seedy clubs, or (assisted by Matt Schuurman’s projection-scape) bowling alleys. Speaking of the latter, it takes bowling alley neon to finally christen the Four Seasons. Until then the lads have changed band names so often they can’t even remember whether they’re The Four Lovers, The Romans, The Varietones.
Anyhow this is the Garden State sans garden. As Tommy notes at the outset, there are three ways up and out of that hard-scrabble scene: “join the army, get mobbed up, or become a star.” Well, the army isn’t involved in this story.
Kory Fulton, Niko Combitsis, William Lincoln, Devon Brayne in Jersey Boys, Mayfield Theatre. Photo by Marc J Chalifoux.
Jersey Boys, which tells its true-life story of dreams and wild success and the pitfalls of fame from four standpoints, sets about individualizing the band members. The hothead swaggerer Tommy takes full credit for putting Jersey “on the map,” and creating a star from a kid with an amazing voice who’s studying to become a barber. “I take this raw clay and make like Michelangelo.”
That kid is Francis Castellucio, soon to be Frankie Vally, soon to be Frankie Valli (Nick Combitsis). His wife-to-be Mary (Jessica Wilson) tells him the spelling has to change because “‘y’ is a bullshit letter and you’re Italian.” And gradually, with much friction and struggle for air play, gigs in dives, backing up other bands, the Four Seasons take shape. Bob Gaudio (William Lincoln, in a wry and appealing performance), writes the hit songs. He’s a thoughtful sort. Amusingly, when he casually drops the name T.S. Eliot and “objective correlative” into bar chat, a girl says “you’re not from around here, are you?” Nick Massi (Devon Brayne) is the laconic bass player. There’s an engagingly wistful reserve built into Devon Brayne’s performance (he played the same role in the 2023 Citadel production).
And suddenly “four guys under a streetlamp singing someone else’s songs” are singing one of their own. And the world is singing “Sherr-eeee” along with them.
Combitsis is at his best while Valli is singing; he captures the patented cadences, swoops, and improbable range to a T (or a high B-flat as the case may be). In dramatic scenes, though, the character fades away a bit, and flattens out. Even Frankie’s Jersey intonation seems on hold, along with a sense of wonder at the improbable ascension to the pop pantheon.
After the sweet close harmonies (and dippy lyrics) of Act I that turn four scrappy kids into a hit band, Jersey Boys becomes a musical where the songs are actually meant to push the story forward. That’s trickier; it’s a story that contains mob debts, tax evasion, the disintegration of families under the stresses of constant touring, and tragedy, including the death by drugs of Frankie’s daughter. There’s a hard-won comeback. The big climactic moment, Gaudio’s Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You, born of personal tragedy and desperation, isn’t quite the showstopper the musical seems to have in mind.
Robbie Towns is amusing as the flamboyantly quirky record producer Bob Crewe, an astrology disciple devoted to the alignment of the stars. And that certainly applies to the ever-more prickly relationships of the band, too. Nick, in Brayne’s performance, seems to emerge, gradually, into three dimension from two. The scene in which he up and leaves the band is a highlight, comic and poignant. “When it’s four guys, and you’re Ringo …” he trails off sadly. “I just want to go home.”
The women of the piece (Wilson, Robyn Esson Kristin Unrah) position themselves generally in the generic, cartoon, bum-wiggling end of the spectrum. They’re collateral damage to the story — which is, of course, part of a story of fractured relationships, abandonment, the high price of fame. As Frankie’s wife Mary, though, Wilson is impressively fierce in the scene in which he comes home to claim the prerogatives of fatherhood that he’s jettisoned for the sake of his career.
The clockwork choreography of ‘60s pop groups, with their giddy synchronicity of arm movements and those sideways bends from the waist, is as fun to watch as tap-dancing in musical theatre. Originally created on Broadway by Des McAnuff’s choreographer colleague Sergio Trujillo, it’s re-worked smartly here for the smaller dimensions of the Mayfield stage by assistant director Christine Watson.
The musical values of Austin’s fast-paced production are impressively high, both from the singers and from the excellent band led by music director Jennifer McMillan. They do the hit jukebox songs proud.
Jersey Boys is a story of gain and loss, of four guys who struggled their way out of a landscape of low expectations, reached the stars, and paid a big price for that journey. “Some are born great, some have have greatness thrust upon them, some achieve greatness then fuck it up,” says Tommy in one of his more soulful moments.
The show returns at the end to the opening image of four guys under a streetlight, “when it was still ahead of us,” as sadder-but-wiser Frankie says. But it’s Gaudio’s poetic reflection that stays with you. Their fans, he says, weren’t the posh people or the music hippies. They were the blue-collar people, the truck drivers, the girls with the dark circles under their eyes behind the counters in diners. It’s there, in the gap between performance and real life that Jersey Boys gets its juice, one of the few jukebox musicals that wouldn’t work just as well, or better, as a concert.
But, hey, resist those songs? You’ve got to be kidding. There’s a fun evening out waiting for you at the Mayfield.
REVIEW
Jersey Boys
Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre
Written by: Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice (book), Bob Gaudio (music), Bob Crewe (lyrics)
Starring: Niko Combitsis, Robbie Towns, Connor Meek, Devon Brayne, William Lincoln, Kory Fulton, Demi Oliver, Mayson Sonntag, Kristin Unruh, Garrett Woods, Robyn Esson, Jessica Wilson, Caleb Di Pomponio
Running: through June 8
Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca, 780-483-4051
