Brand New Jersey Boys.

Those Jersey Boys are back in Melbourne for 14 weeks at the Princess Theatre. Coral Drouyn speaks with the new cast members and takes a trip down memory lane.

In 1962 I was in my teens and I kept hearing this song called ‘Sherry’, but I never heard who it was by. This was a time when top forty plays were limited on the radio, and there were no video clips on television, no internet, no MP3 players, no (gasp, shock, horror) YouTube. If you were lucky you owned a portable record player where you could stack TEN 45 singles. I was lucky…AND it was pink. Double whammy! ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ was the first single I actually bought, followed by ‘Walk Like A Man’, and finally I caught up with ‘Sherry’, by buying the first album. At one stage I even owned the incredibly rare double album ‘The Beatles versus The Four Seasons’ – now a collector’s item. The music has been with me all my life….it’s even fantastic to exercise to (Exercise! The season following Christmas dinner).

For fifty years now, generation after generation has come to know and love the sound that Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli created between them. Just as the Beatles defined the British sound, The Four Seasons defined the East Coast of America. The songs were tight, perfect pop songs. Biting lyrics, the falsetto of Frankie Valli, the hand clapping, the rhythm all made a recipe for success which eventually became musical immortality.

As a musical, Jersey Boys opened in Melbourne in 2009, after being a Broadway smash hit and winning four Tony Awards in 2006. It seems impossible that three and a half years later it’s coming back (well it’s never really been away), but such is the power of the music. There can’t be anyone in the whole of Australia that doesn’t know at least ONE Four Seasons song. How many of us have walked around singing ‘Oh What A Night (Late December 1963)’ without ever realising that Bob Gaudio wrote it about losing his virginity when he was just 17?

With this return production comes a new cast to Melbourne. They weren’t around when the Four Seasons first created their magic, but they’re true Jersey Boys now. Declan Egan is making his stage debut as Bob Gaudio. It took three months of extensive auditions, culminating in Bob Gaudio and the Broadway producers giving the thumbs up to his audition tapes before the young NIDA graduate became part of the cast halfway through the Sydney run. He was astounded at the music when he first saw the show. “I remember when I first saw Jersey Boys I was surprised because hit after hit, I recognised all the songs and was left saying over and over “Oh they wrote that too,” he tells me.

The amazing Graham Foote plays Frankie Valli. As Musical Director and Producer for the platinum recording group The Ten Tenors, Graham has already made his mark. Frankie Valli is the icing on the cake. I asked him how old he was when he first heard a Four Seasons song. “I was quite young. My mum had a 60’s Hits compilation record that had ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ on it. But my favourite is ‘Can’t Take My Eyes off of You’.”

I’ve followed Glaston Toft’s career since he was a WAAPA student and I lived in Perth. His musical versatility is perfect for the role of Nick Massi. “I first heard a Four Seasons song when I was a kid. It was ‘Walk Like A Man’ and it was in a Robert Downey Jnr Film – Heart and Souls. Great pop songs are timeless and the Four Seasons have had hits in the 60s, 70s, and 80s and their music is still being covered today.”

And, as Tommy de Vito…the ultimate ‘Joisey Boy’ who could have brought the whole dream crashing down, Anthony Harkin brings all of his musical theatre experience (Rock of Ages, Avenue Q) to the role and was given the seal of approval from Frankie Valli himself. He loves the music. “The simplicity of these songs is what makes them perfect pop songs, then memorable melodic hooks and the classic vocal arrangements. Also these guys were singing about what they knew. They were rooted in reality and that stuff never gets old. That’s why they stand the test of time.”

Jersey Boyshas already shown it stands the test of time. With a great book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, music by Bob Gaudio and lyrics by Bob Crewe, Tony Award winning director Des McAnuff has given us an instant classic. Too often a musical fails because the book isn’t up to the standard of the music, or vice versa, but there’s no such danger with this show. Some things really do get better with age.

Jersey Boys plays at the Princess Theatre, Melbourne from January 10 until March 24, 2013, with opening night on January 12. Book on 1300 111 011.

Photographer: Jeff Busby.

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