Forget Musical Comedies: Let Tonys Swing to 'Jersey'

Given how satisfied the customers seem at "Jersey Boys," it's no surprise that the start of a tour has been announced for December in San Francisco (no telling yet when Washington will get it). The enjoyment, I think, goes beyond the baby-boomer-obvious: the indelible Four Seasons sound and the group's remarkable string of hits, among them, "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Walk Like a Man" and "Oh What a Night." The added kick comes courtesy of McAnuff and librettists Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, who choose an elegantly simple way to tell a boilerplate rock-and-roll story.

The humor is sharp and the schmaltz curtailed. "Jersey Boys" is likened by some observers to a VH1 biography, but its efforts at mythmaking are not so sensationalized. It's more reminiscent of a sweet, underappreciated Tom Hanks film, "That Thing You Do!," an account of the fictional band the Wonders, a one-hit '60s sensation. The story of the Four Seasons' coming together and falling apart is focused and filled with little payoffs. Songs are strategically dropped in and are never milked. There's a strict partnering here of story and music.

Certainly, the narrative puzzle pieces -- overnight fame, money, booze, trouble at home, dissension in the ranks, the breakup -- fit a you-name-it assortment of entertainment success stories. "Jersey Boys" does not try to break the mold, but it doesn't needlessly embroider it, either. Klara Zieglerova's set is spare, allowing for a series of projections, from the magnified-cartoon school of Roy Lichtenstein, to set a jovial mood.

That leaves ample space for big voices and big performances. Hoff, playing the thuggish major-domo of the quartet, has mastered the bravado of a little man seeking to fill out suits with broader shoulders. Reichard is just as strong as his polar opposite, a musician of securer talent and finer feeling.

And in Young, a heretofore unheralded actor-singer, McAnuff has scored a major find. Compact of carriage, Young is an outsize presence with an astonishing ability to vocally channel Valli. His second-act delivery of "Can't Take My Eyes Off You" exuberantly puts show-stopping finesse on display.

"The Drowsy Chaperone" is, unquestionably a more original concept, and the one with greater creative potential.

In isolated moments at the Marquis Theatre, you get tantalizing tastes of what might have come with further development. Most of those have to do with the inspired ideas that cement our bond with Martin's Man in Chair. The notion is that he's playing for us a vintage recording of "The Drowsy Chaperone," a supposed piece of fluff from the '20s, accommodatingly stuffed with cliched roles: Latin lovers, crooks in disguise, prissy butlers, dizzy matrons, jaded starlets and a tipsy female minder of the starlet euphemistically described as being "drowsy."

The best moments in director Casey Nicholaw's production come when the dysfunctional Man in Chair is explaining his appreciation of the safely familiar if flawed show, and real life interrupts both him and the reenactment.

A visitor knocking at the door, the recording skipping, the placing of the wrong record on the turntable -- all have repercussions on the stage, and they're cleverly realized. The show-within-the-show, though, is not only tiresome, but also isn't consistently true to the period it's satirizing, which blurs unnecessarily the function of Man in Chair: What is it about musicals, exactly, that he's professing to love?

In the end, it's "Jersey Boys" that comes closest to fulfilling its mission. Now it just depends on which recording Tony voters want up their sleeve.

The 60th Annual Tony Awards (three hours) airs next Sunday at 8 p.m. on CBS.