Jersey Boys Review
I blame you. Yes, you. All of my trusted friends and the many random acquaintances who went on and on about Jersey Boys – “The best musical I’ve seen in years!” You told me that I was so lucky to have the amazing opportunity to see such a great show, in London nonetheless. You told me I’d love it.
You lied.
Of course, I had good reason to believe you. Everyone raves about this show. Everyone goes to see this show. There are numerous tours on multiple continents, and it’s still going strong. But, as I sat watching it, all I wanted to know was “Why?” Do not mistake me; I thoroughly enjoy the music of The Four Seasons and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons (which the musical goes to painfully great lengths to distinguish between) for that matter. So don’t assume that I disliked it just because the music wasn’t my taste. The music is my taste; the performance was not.
There is no arguing with the fact that there’s an incredible amount of talent on the stage. Ryan Molloy, playing the incomparable Frankie Valli, does in fact “have a voice like an angel” and a devil of a supporting cast. There was not a single note out of tune all night. But, candidly, that just made this show more like a technically proficient, but nevertheless boring, concert instead of a truly captivating musical. Sure, the songs you love are sung accurately, but where’s the real entertainment?
It certainly did not help that when these guys sang, not one of them smiled, ever. Maybe they thought that was supposed to be a “Jersey” thing, or maybe the originals didn’t smile either so the cast thought this was true to life, but for me, it sucked the life out of their performance. Well, with the possible exception of Stephen Ashfield, who played Bob Gaudio, and actually did smile on occasion, which is probably why he seemed like the only one with any life in him.
These four seemed to be trying so hard to play their parts that they forgot to make sure to let these characters be real people as well. There was no breathing, no scratching, no natural guy movements of any kind, just choreographed dancing across the stage and singing on cue. This was particularly obvious because of the bland performance sequences, but also because of the extreme effort that was going into talking with a Jersey accent. Three of the four leads were able to keep it up for most of the night, but Eugene McCoy, who played Nick Massi, was truly horrendous. I couldn’t concentrate on anything he was saying because he was so obviously and terribly straining to try and say it with the correct dialect, and failing miserably. Though autumn is one of my favorite seasons, that night I couldn’t wait for “Fall” to be over.
The performance left so much to be desired that it even made the plot seem weak as well. This is a history that has fascinated audiences around the world. But this cast made the story of four Jersey boys’ improbable rise to fame into a dull caricature. It seemed like a mere outline, rather than a gritty reenactment of what their lives were, what went right and what went wrong. Sure, the important events were there, but the details that made their lives so interesting were not. Just like the flat and lifeless comic strip-type projections behind them – the story came across as two-dimensional.
Perhaps you’ve seen the movie Across the Universe, a story about American youths in 1960s where the plot is based around Beatles songs. Perhaps, like me, at the end of it you thought, “I would have much rather just listened to the album.” Don’t know why that came to mind…
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