The Herald - The Herald Magazine
Rags to riches and back to rags again
THERE are biography musicals which take a Conservative Party/Boris approach to telling the story; don’t ask too many tricky questions of the subject(s), don’t really look below the surface and study character – or lack of it.
These jukebox musicals tend to link a series of songs, with a loose chronological detail and hope that’s enough.
But occasionally a show arrives that asks more questions than the Met, and still proves to become a phenomenal success. Such as Jersey Boys.
It’s a stage piece which openly declares Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ connections to the Mafia, the band member’s stints in penal institutions, their massive debt problems and the times they’d rather have hit each other in the face than focus on creating hits.
These were wide-ass guys in tight suits with loose connections to the concepts of morality and honesty. (For example, they enjoyed the patronage of New Jersey mobster Angelo DeCarlo, for whom the Four Seasons performed in prison after he was handed a 12-year sentence in 1970.)
As band member Tommy DeVito recalled; “As we are told from the outset, there were only three ways out of the neighbourhood; join the army, get “mobbed up” or get famous. For us, it was two out of three.”
They certainly became famous and loved for their collection of hits; Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Let’s Hang On . . . the list is longer than the band’s collective rap sheet.
But does all this dark revelation in a musical theatre show lessen audience appreciation?
Not a bit of it. Thanks to some very good writing by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, the show flows faster than a Fifties doo-wop chart hit and audiences can absorb the dark history lesson while wallowing in the song list.
The conceit used is we are introduced to each of the band
members, who each offer their own version of the “truth,” (in the way our political leaders are doing right now.)
Tommy De Vito is the grifter, the chancer. Bob Gaudio is clean cut and loves to quote TS Eliot.
Nick Massi, we learn, irons his shirts twice and writes great vocal arrangements.
And then there’s Frankie Valli, who wasn’t a bad kid growing up at all, but revealed an angelic, scorching falsetto voice.
And so, we get to see this rags-to-riches-to rags story played out, the inevitability perhaps that a clutch of (musically talented) tearaways will end up back where they started.
What gives this
musical story real weight however is we can view the remarkable contrast of the background stories with the sublime pop majesty of the material they produced on stage.
While these angels with dirty faces were dumping on their wives/ girlfriends/tax accountants they were being loved by audiences around the world.
Jersey Boys is a rare treat; it’s an honest, un-alloyed story. It’s a warning to others about
excess and bad behaviour. It’s a delight. (All politicians should be made to see it.) And even if you’re not a paid-up member of the Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons fan club it’s a night out not to be missed.