REVIEW: Jersey Boys (Civic Theatre)

The good kind of Jersey [by James Wenley]

The fabulous foursome!

As I take my seat in the Civic, the Jersey Boy stage looks surprisingly non-descript. It’s a grey and drab industrial looking set, complete with walkways and chain mesh. A pretty ordinary set for an international musical, but then, the origins of the real Jersey blue collar Four Season members were rather ordinary too. Is this to be the stage for the multi-award winning Broadway Smash that has finally wound its way to little young Auckland?

As soon as local boy Vince Harder appears as a modern day  French rapper, singing Ces Soirees-La (a hit in France in 2000, we know it better as Oh what a night…), the stage transforms as only mega-budget musicals do, lighting up in brilliant colour and moving all over the place. It’s a spectacle rich experience – microphone stands rise up from the floor, and attractive pop-art graphics on appear screens to accompany the storytelling, but all that is blown away by the blended and distinctive sound of the show’s four leads as The Four Seasons, giving us their all with hit after hit. The most effective moments of the show are the sheer musicality of the foursome as they come right to the edge of the stage, concert style, and perform the tunes. They don’t make songs like these anymore – simple hooks, but packed with emotion, all topped with Frankie Valli’s remarkable falsetto. Or rather, make that Dion Billios’ remarkable falsetto…