Review: Jersey Boys at Bass Concert Hall [Theater]
The road less traveled, however, tells the story of the act itself through the music. The rewards are greater -- instead of watching Galileo of the Ga Ga Kids scamper about to the tune of "Killer Queen", we can understand intuitively why we're hearing these particular songs, as the people singing them are portraying the people who wrote 'em. Wikipedia charitably refers to this as a "documentary-style musical", at least until one of you edits it, and that's the path that Jersey Boys, playing at the Bass Concert Hall as part of the Broadway Across America touring program, takes.
"Documentary-style" is a bit much, really -- mostly, Jersey Boys aims to be a singing-and-dancing good time to the tune of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons' greatest hits. To some extent, it succeeds at that -- there's a stretch near to the end of the first act where we go through "Sherry", "Big Girls Don't Cry", and "Walk Like A Man", and there's no reason to be cynical about that. When a bunch of talented singers bust into three of rock and roll's finer early moments onstage in front of us, it's a pretty likable moment.
There are other likable moments, too -- the debut of "Cry For Me" is a good one, as are "Working My Way Back To You" and "December 1963 (Oh What A Night)". (How would you even screw those up?) The rest of the show, meanwhile, is a mix of often-random song fragments (a character, on his way to jail, might drop a verse from "Earth Angel", just for the hell of it) and tension that almost never actually rises.
But who cares too much about all that, really? They'll come for the Four Seasons songs, and they'll stay whether or not they have to sit through some boring parts, so long as there's still a chance to clap along. And those opportunities certainly do abound. At times, in fact, the show even flirts with the idea of making a point -- that the Four Seasons and Frankie Valli were the music of the people, while the Beatles were the music of the, er, snobby elitist people, or something. (A better guess is that they were both the music of the people, since they both sold a zillion records.) It's a point that the show doesn't make all that well, ultimately, but for a moment at the end of the first act, when the stage lights flood outward to the audience, the connection between performer and spectator becomes blurred in a way that's surprisingly convincing.
Other points that the show attempts to make through the story are less so. For those unfamiliar with the history of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, it's pretty boilerplate Behind the Music stuff -- four guys who never expected to amount to anything find themselves in a wildly successful rock band, personal problems tear them apart, they neglect their families, and then find triumph and redemption. None of that is hard to convey, it's just a little bit boring. We're never invested in any of the character's personal lives for a moment -- at best, we can muster some interest in their careers -- so when it veers too sharply into, say, Valli's home life, we're pretty alienated.
The show's largest misstep comes near the end, as Valli's daughter dies of a heroin overdose. The character had only appeared onstage for about 45 seconds a few scenes prior to the news being delivered, and what's clearly intended as the emotional climax of the show barely registers.
In fact, most attempts at being theater fail in Jersey Boys. Sure, it's theater in the sense that everything being watched by someone is theater -- a Lady Gaga concert or the MTV Movie Awards or the dude on the bus who you're pretty sure is peeing his pants -- but as far as a satisfying live performance that conveys a strong narrative goes, Jersey Boys is pretty much a dud.
So it's no surprise that Jersey Boys is at its most effective when it casts most of that to the side and just focuses on the music. Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons recorded at least eight or nine bonafide American rock and roll classics, and there are enough supplementary songs to pad that figure to Broadway show-length. There are even moments that are sufficiently tense and dramatically satisfying enough to surprise an audience -- the reveal of what songs band member Bob Gaudio wrote before unleashing his two finest songs, "Sherry" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off Of You", are big, satisfying THEATRICAL moments, in all caps like that -- they're just not in great enough supply to justify the rest of the show.
Ultimately, though, most of this is irrelevant. Jersey Boys is a little bit boring, and a little bit unsatisfying as theater, but the people who pony up for a ticket are paying for a round of expert Frankie Valli karaoke, and it delivers in that regard. It'd just have been nice if they could have cut the boring parts out to give everyone more of what they want.
