The boys of `Jersey’


Earlier this month, I sat down with the stars of San Francisco’s Jersey Boys, the quartet driving audiences into a frenzy every night as Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. You can read the story here.

Here are some tidbits that didn’t make it into the newspaper. If this were a DVD, we’d be in the “special features” section right now.

The players are (pictured above from left) Deven May (Tommy DeVito), Michael Ingersoll (Nick Massi), Christopher Kale Jones (Frankie Valli) and Erich Bergen (Bob Gaudio), and we’re in a suite at the Hotel Diva, across Geary Street from the Curran Theatre, where Jersey Boys is running seemingly until it’s not running anymore.

A discussion about how audience members react with such personal connections to the Four Seasons music leads Bergen to say: “My dad listened to this music. His style was more Motown and doo-wop, but the Four Seasons were definitely in there, and I heard it growing up. That’s one of the reasons I was so excited to be doing this show rather than an old traditional book musical.”

May interjects: “Isn’t this a book musical? I don’t know…”

After some discussion, the actors determine that Rick Elice and Marshall Brickman’s book is indeed one of the key factors in their show’s success. The way the script incorporates Four Seasons songs into the framework of a tightly written play does make it a traditional, indeed, very well written, book musical.

Says Bergen: “OK. Write this: Erich Bergen is wrong. Three out of four seasons say Erich Bergen is wrong.”

Cue much laughter and more discussion about why Jersey Boys works so darn well. After much praise is heaped on director Des McAnuff and the creative team, Ingersoll theorizes that people are drawn in by the true story of these New Jersey guys and their rough lives, which involved prison stretches for Massi and DeVito. Later, after fame struck, life didn’t necessarily get any easier.

“One of the points of the show,” Ingersoll says, “is that in life, you never reach a point where everything’s good — no matter how much success, money or fame you have. There’s always another side to the coin. Think about us. We’re on the road, away from home for a year. I’m away from my wife for a year. She visits, and this is a dream job for me. The guys would say the same thing. Nothing could be better in that way. But the fact remains I’m not seeing my wife for such a long time. There’s a price to pay. It’s never just: I’ve arrived! Everything’s great! This show thrives on showing the reality of that.”

The reality of the show is so convincing, in fact, that when audience members hang around the Curran stage door for a post-show chat, fans call the actors by their character names.

“We walk out that door and we’re still Bob, Frankie, Tommy and Nick,” Bergen says. “They’ll say things like, `When you wrote that song…’ And I have to remind them I’m just an actor. But they don’t want you to be an actor. They want you to be the real thing.”

The huge success of Jersey Boys in New York and now in San Francisco means more productions are forthcoming — probably London and another touring production (that might actually tour to places other than San Francisco). There’s been talk of a movie, of course. And Bergen theorizes that in 10 years, every high school in the country will be doing Jersey Boys.

Says May: “If you take all the profanity out of the show for the high school version, it’ll be 45 minutes long!”

Jones chimes in: “I cannot wait to see a high school guy singing in Frankie Valli’s voice. I think it might be easier to reach those notes when you’re still in puberty.”

And finally, here’s a fact you need to know about each of these actors.
Jones is a Rubik’s Cube expert. He can solve the puzzle in under three minutes.
Ingersoll has a black belt in Tai Kwon Do and may do some teaching while he’s here.
May is a professional photographer.
Bergen produces a podcast called Green Room Radio.

For information about Jersey Boys, visit www.shnsf.com.

‘Jersey’ mail

No question Jersey Boys is one of the most exciting Bay Area theatrical events of 2006. Let’s hear from a couple readers who have their own thoughts on Jersey Boys.

Jan Brown of Livermore castigated me for not mentioning the show’s foul language in my review.

Point well taken. F-bombs explode all over the stage in Jersey Boys. Ms. Brown wrote that she would not recommend the show strictly on the basis of language and sexual content (there’s a scene with prostitutes but no nudity or actual sex).

The language is definitely strong, but I have two words for you: New Jersey.

To my mind, you can’t tell the story of four guys who come from the depths of the Garden State and its mobsters, petty thieves and macho mugs without the R-rated language. This is, after all, the same territory as The Sopranos.

So if you go to Jersey Boys (and you really should if you want to have some fun in the theater), consider yourself warned.

Tracie Pyers of San Bruno wrote with a keen observation. She celebrated a recent birthday by seeing Jersey Boys on Broadway with the original cast and says Christopher Kale Jones (left), who plays Frankie Valli at the Curran Theatre in San Francisco, was just as good, “if not better than” Tony Award-winner John Lloyd Young, who plays Frankie on Broadway.

Here’s what Tracie wrote:

I saw the NYC cast on the Today show and started thinking about a trip to New York. I was turning 40 in September so it seemed like it would be the perfect treat. It was wonderful to anticipate the show and I must have logged on to youtube.com and watched their Tony performance a million times. Still the New York show and the treat of seeing a Tony-winning show on Broadway was unbeatable. We loved it so much and wanted to see it again here in San Francisco. I was prepared to be a bit disappointed, thinking that the San Francisco cast somehow wouldn’t be able to carry it for me, like the orginal and Tony-winning cast in NYC. But I have to tell you that I was not at all disappointed with the San Francisco Cast. I did feel that Christopher Kale Jones was as good if not better than John Lloyd Young as judging from the audience’s reaction, they felt the same way.
The NYC Tommy DeVito (Christian Hoff) won the Tony for his performance, and boy could you tell. SF’s character (Deven May) played him a little older. Not bad but I did really appreciate the NYC Tommy and everything that went into his performance.

Who Loves You

Last night, the Curran Theatre in San Francisco was the center of the golden oldie universe.

The Tony Award-winning musical Jersey Boys kicked off its national tour, but it doesn’t look like the show will be going anywhere for a while. If the phenomenal audience response last night — not to mention all the curiosity at the office from people who hardly ever talk to me, let alone about theater — is any indication, we’ll be seeing a lot of these Jersey boys in the coming months.

You can read my four-star review here, but I feel the need to review the opening-night audience as well. If you’ve ever been to an official press opening, you know how weird they can be. You’ve got stodgy old critics like me, pens in hand, who don’t respond much, and then you have all the invited guests (that is, people who got their tickets for free) over-reacting, so the response is far from natural.

That wasn’t the case Sunday at Jersey Boys, which, if you don’t know, is the musical biography of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The mostly middle-age (and older) crowd whooped and hollered and carried on such that the show stopped no fewer than three times — after “Sherry” and “Walk Like a Man” in Act 1 and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” in Act 2. The actors had to hold while the audience made repeated attempts to tear the roof off the theater. My personal favorite Seasons song is “December, 1963 (Oh What a Night),” which opens the show (in its hit 2000 French hip-hop version), reappears in an Act 1 deflowering scene, and then keeps the blood pumping at the top of Act 2.

Perhaps the audience reaction had something to do with the fact that the real-life Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio and Tommy DeVito (not to mention songwriter Bob Crewe) were in the house and took the stage at the curtain call to take bows with their theatrical counterparts.

I can’t say enough about the fab four at the story’s center. Conveniently, three of them have Web sites, so you can check them out for yourselves.
Christopher Kale Jones (Frankie Valli): www.christopherkalejones.com (currently under construction, but now that the show’s open, surely Christopher will get around to finishing up the site)
Michael Ingersoll (Nick Massi): www.michaelingersoll.com (a slick site)
Erich Bergen (Bob Gaudio): www.erichbergen.com (a My Space page that includes four songs, including one of my new favorites, “Bless the Broken Road”)
Deven May (Tommy Devito): Deven May Photography (how much talent can one guy have?)

These guys are stars in the making. Who needs Broadway when the tour is this good?

And there are juicy rumors afloat out there that Steven Spielberg is interested in making a Jersey Boys movie. Guess we’ll see how Dreamgirls does to determine if or when the movie gets made.