By Peter Marks
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, June 4, 2006
I had a blast at "Jersey Boys." So sue me.
I know, it's not "Tosca." It's not even "Dirty Rotten Scoundrels." But it's slick and flashy and it gets the adrenaline going -- which is more than you can say for the rest of the tatty pack of new musicals that opened this year on Broadway.
If the Tony voters have any sense, they will overlook the fact that "Jersey Boys" has no original songs -- it's a jukebox show, based on the hits of the Four Seasons -- and give it the award next Sunday for best new musical of the 2005-06 season.
Some might argue that it sends a bad message to reward a production that, in essence, is little more than a cut-and-paste effort, with really good voices tossed in. The fact is, however, that the wreckage left by other recent entries in this genre -- shows based on the music of John Lennon ("Lennon"), Johnny Cash ("Ring of Fire") and the Beach Boys ("Good Vibrations") -- reveals that it takes more than a little savvy to give pop material a pulse and a soul. Fortunately for "Jersey Boys," the magician-in-chief is director Des McAnuff, probably best known for having shepherded "The Who's Tommy" to an acclaimed Broadway debut in 1993.
I caught up with "Jersey Boys" at the August Wilson Theatre last week, six months after it opened, and it was more impressive than I was prepared for. Although the show is dominated by the electric central performance of John Lloyd Young as falsetto-voiced Frankie Valli, the young actors playing the group's other members -- Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer -- are each in their own way indispensable, muscularly rounding out the production's gleeful swagger.
I saw "Jersey Boys" on the same day I took in the musical that is its putative closest rival for the Tony -- that precious cup of twee, "The Drowsy Chaperone." Set in the apartment of an emotionally constipated man in love with show tunes, "Drowsy" is at once spoof and valentine, a show that tells us that it's okay to be gaga for Rodgers and Hammerstein and that, perhaps, there's nothing more embarrassing for a grown man.
"Drowsy," too, has an endearing lead actor in Bob Martin, playing the reclusive Man in Chair, in whose imagination a silly musical in the style of the '20s is reenacted by its original stars. (If only Travis Bickle's weapons fixation in "Taxi Driver" had been limited to "Annie Get Your Gun.")
"Drowsy" is cute and the idea is fun, and if trends mean anything, it's the more likely winner next Sunday; the Tony has a thing for musical comedy these days. Being a musical making fun of musicals seems practically a prerequisite. ("The Producers," "Hairspray," "Avenue Q" and "Monty Python's Spamalot" are the four previous winners.) The drawback is in execution. Although the conceit yields several funny meta-theatrical gags in "Drowsy," the period parody songs by Lisa Lambert and Greg Morrison are limp and, with one exception -- Sutton Foster's "Show Off" -- disappointingly witless. And few of the performances are the type of memorable self-send-ups that the Man in Chair continually promises us.
Artistically speaking, "Drowsy" and "Jersey" share a category with two lighter lightweights based on novels and movies: "The Color Purple" and "The Wedding Singer." "Wedding Singer," however, is a mere stalking horse. And despite all the happiness that a "Purple" win would engender for producer Oprah Winfrey, it would represent a minor upset.
The Tony for best musical, it should be noted, is the evening's most coveted prize, partly because it's also Broadway's most potent marketing tool. The past four recipients of the award are all still running, and in the case of the irreverent "Avenue Q," an import from off-Broadway, the statuette was absolutely key to its sustained health in the musical marketplace.
The musical award, though, is not an exclusive barometer of success: You might recall that in the year of "Avenue Q's" triumph, an itsy-bitsy teeny-weeny show called "Wicked" was in contention. Losing seems not to have knocked it one pace off its phenomenal stride.
For major cities across the country, the award solidifies the likelihood of a visit, sooner than later, of a touring version. "Spamalot," winner for best musical last June, arrives this week at the National Theatre in Washington, and "The Light in the Piazza" -- which at the same ceremony collected the Tony for Adam Guettel's music and lyrics -- is a featured event this Christmas at the Kennedy Center.
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.
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