Jersey Boys returns to Ireland next week - and it's definitely not a jukebox musical

Despite their squeaky clean image, Frankie Valli and his group came from a tough background. Jersey Boys doesn’t shirk this, writes Ed Power

THE stars of Jersey Boys are taken aback slightly when their show is off-handedly referred to as a “jukebox musical”. No slight is intended.

I was merely pointing out that the Broadway smash — returning to Ireland for a limited run next week — is in the modern tradition of song and dance productions that serve up old hits in a crowd-pleasing new context.

In this case, the inspiration is Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, the ’60s pop group behind such gloopy perennials as ‘Sherry’, ‘Walk Like A Man’ and ‘I Love You Baby’.

“Almost all of the songs are performed in the context of the scene,” says Matt Corner, who portrays Valli as a naive young man thrust into the rough and ready world of early rock ‘n roll.

“After the show a lot of people say ‘Uou made me cry and you made me laugh’. It’s fantastic that you can do that with a so-called jukebox musical.”

What sets Jersey Boys apart from Mama Mia and its ilk, says the cast, is that it tells a true story and never pulls its punches.

Though the Four Seasons’ music was feel-good and saccharine, behind their unsullied image, the quartet was properly from the wrong side of the tracks.

Valli, born Francesco Castelluccio, grew up in a tough Italian-American neighbourhood in Newark, New Jersey. Here, criminality was a way of life; several of Valli’s bandmates had stints behind bars before the group achieved success.

“Their image was squeaky clean,” says Corner.

“They worried that, were the truth to be revealed, they would be dropped. You’ve got to remember that these were the days Elvis performing ‘Hound Dog’ caused a scandal because he was shaking his hips.

“Having a gangster image and writing music for kids wasn’t allowed. They didn’t want the facts to come out and so for many years nobody knew about their origins.”

The production visiting Dublin’s Bord Gais Energy Theatre from next week has an all-British cast. Conveying the New Jersey swagger of Valli and his cohorts was a challenge, they admit. The actors worked with a dialogue coach, spent time in the US and binged on The Sopranos.

“If you watch The Sopranos, you’ll see it’s a very specific identity,” says Stephen Webb, who plays tough guy guitarist Tommy DeVito — a larger- than-life bad boy who could have stepped out of Martin Scorsese’s Goodfellas (and later in life worked for that movie’s star, Joe Pesci).

“Everything is very quick. They have no airs and graces. They say exactly what they think.”

On a visit to New York, several cast members took an excursion to the Jersey Shore and the Belmont Tavern, the dive bar where in 1954 the Four Seasons played their first show.

“You had all these old Italian American wise guys hanging about. It is easy to forget that these are real people. One of the members of the Four Seasons [bassist Nick Massi] has passed away but the others are alive. And you want to do justice to them,” says Webb.

Jersey Boys was the brainchild of Bob Gaudio, the principal songwriter of the Four Seasons and has the blessing of Valli (who continues to tour at the age of 81). Yet it falls far short of hagiography.

Valli is revealed to be an unreliable husband while DeVito becomes indebted to the mob and nearly sinks the band at the height of their success.

Anyone expecting two hours of feel-good hits is in for a shock. We Will Rock You it isn’t.

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“You don’t get a lot of shows like this where things are depicted going wrong,” says Corner.

“You see people passing away — you see characters losing family members. When Jersey Boys opened on Broadway, audience members were looking at their tickets, wondering if they were in the right theatre. It tells the whole story — warts and all. You get the hits in context,” he says.

One surprise is the musical’s slow start. It begins with a French-language version of December 1963 (‘Oh What A Night’) — a reminder that the Four Season’s music has travelled the world. Then DeVito saunters out and recounts the group’s murky origins. Initially, the ‘jukebox’ element is conspicuously absent.

“It’s a real New Jersey thing,” says Webb. “They have that sense of humour. You think you’re getting one thing, then it changes suddenly.

“It’s a way of telling the audience ‘This is the night you’re going to have. It will be full of surprises.’ You win them over every time,” he says.

Despite the occasional grittiness, Jersey Boys was embraced from the outset. The production opened on Broadway in October 2005 and has run constantly ever since.

It has received four Tony awards, with the soundtrack selling over a million copies.

In 2014, Clint Eastwood adapted it into a movie though there is a widespread feeling that his version doesn’t capture the pizzazz of the stage show.

“It’s a lot slower. There are extra scenes which do stuff that we can’t do in a live production,” says Corner.

“But you’ll never achieve that sense of live performance. To have someone speak at regular volume and then break into song. That’s just a magical thing.”

Nobody is a bigger fan of Jersey Boys than Valli, whose career has arguably received a boost from its success.

He met Corner backstage one night. It was a surreal exchange, says the actor.

“He was telling me all this stuff about his life and I was thinking ‘I know this already — I’m playing you every night’.

“He said to me, ‘I was a tough little kid. There are some things I did that I’m not proud of’.

“He would pick up a crowbar and try to sort out a problem himself. Tommy used to pull a gun out of his bag when he was getting the money after a gig.

“He’d place it on the desk next to him, just to make sure they were paid. That’s the world they were living in.”

Jersey Boys start a 10-night run at the Bord Gais Energy Theatre, Dublin from January 13