Jersey Boys Find A Home In Sin City

By Alex Ben Block

Jersey Boys

LAS VEGAS (Hollywood Today) 11/3/09 –  Halloween night the streets of Las Vegas were jammed with witches, pirates, mermaids and jokers amid a river of costumed revelers; but in the spacious modern theater inside the Palazzo Resort Hotel-Casino it was 1962 once again and four Italian boys were starting their unlikely rise from the hard streets of New Jersey to international stardom in the Broadway musical “Jersey Boys.”

The Las Vegas production of “Jersey Boys” has been a hit since it opened in May 2008, bringing the Tony Award winning Broadway sensation to a city that plays a supporting role in the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, mixing jukebox hits with a surprisingly captivating tale of love, life and fame.

I caught up with the Sin City version of Frankie Valli’s life as madness filled the streets outside, and music drove the story inside the specially built two story theater where the simplicity of the sets works brilliantly to put the emotion, drama and power of the musical front and center. It’s no wonder “Jersey Boys” has been chosen by the town’s biggest newspaper, The Las Vegas Review-Journal, as “Best Show” for the two years it has been running.

Even for those too young to remember Valli, the music he performed and created along with Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi lives on as part of our cultural heritage, and it is all here performed and delivered so that it becomes part of a compelling narrative. By the time Rick Faugno (one of two actors who play Valli) belted out “Sherry” deep into Act One of the two act musical drama, the SRO audience was nodding and toe tapping along with the stream of hits.

The primary narrator of the story is Tommy DeVito, played here by Deven May, with all the flavor, the Jersey accent and the dark edginess of a kid from the mean streets where, as the character explains, the life choices were join the mob, join the army or sing your way to fame. The alternative, the subtext makes clear, was to be road kill in a society where the going is tough and there is no margin for failure.

At the performance I saw Drew Gehling played Bob Gaudio, the songwriter who never liked performing, but whose lyrics and words were the fuel that drove the engine which became the music that defined the end of an Americana. The Four Seasons borrowed heavily from African American music and came just before Blacks were able to take center stage on their own, before R & B went mainstream and a decade before gangstas and rappers.

Nick Massi is played by Jeff Leibow, who filled out the group and played the role of sidekick to Tommy, at least for as long as he could stand to share a room with him on the endless days on the road performing all over the world. Eventually, Nick’s frustration epitomizes why the group broke up, despite their success, after Tommy was banished to, where else, Las Vegas, by the goons he had borrowed thousands from to cover his ever mounting gambling debts.

One of the little secrets of the production is that there are only three females in the show who manage, through costume and make up changes, to play a dozen or more roles. Like the sets, props, huge metal fences and video visuals on giant screens, they flash throughout the production to provide the faces and settings that keep the story racing along.

What is paramount, driving the story and keeping viewers hearts racing, is the music. It started before the Beatles brought the British invasion of the 1960s, before the Summer of love and the world rocked at Woodstock, and kept its place through the years of the Vietnam war and beyond, frozen in its time even as everything else changed so dramatically in every possible way.

To help define these changes, in keeping with the group’s name, the sections of the play are divided by the seasons of the year. The Spring brings songs such as “Earth Angel,” and “Sunday Kind Of Love,” while the summer heats up with “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like A Man.” The fall arrives in Act Two with “Big Man In Town,” and as the group splinters ”Let’s Hang On” and “Bye Bye Baby” while the winter is filled by “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” “Fallen Angels,” “Rag Doll,” “Who Loves You,” and many more.

Throughout the fast paced scenes directed by Des McAnuff, clever choreography by Sergio Trujillo and the music, always the music as arranged and directed by Ron Melrose, all work to deepen the story of these characters who use fame to climb out of life’s sewer and onto the highest mountains of wealth and society, only to be pulled back down again and again by their own foibles, failures and very human weaknesses.

The long and winding musical trail leads eventually to a reunion of the group when they are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, as their stories diverge and their lives hit a crescendo that ties together the loose stings and lost memories of these players on a very public stage, who experienced so much private pain.

There is a reason Jersey Boys was a hit on Broadway, and in touring companies, as well as playing a long run in Las Vegas. It is a snapshot of a time when things were both tougher and simpler, of an America where values were easy to define but hard to live by and performers could project an image far different from the reality of their lives. Today with the 24/7 media it seems we know too much about the denizens of celebrity culture, few of whom were as driven or talented as this quartet, who despite the spotlight led their lives as they had grown up, on the smelly, crowded, dangerous streets of Jersey.

A final word about the hotel and theater where this musical drama takes place. The Palazzo, which is part of a complex on the fabled Vegas strip with The Venetian Hotel, provides an interesting contrast to the story of “Jersey Boys.” Opened not long before the musical was mounted, it is grander and more luxurious than the hotels and resorts of the generation that preceded it.

Upon entering most casino hotels, you are greeted by a sea of slots clanging out their welcome. Here you enter a grand lobby that looks like a classy resort in the European tradition with grand public areas, art work, fountains and high ceilings. You don’t have to go far to find the casino and those clanging slots, but even that area seems less intense than the older joints with their blatant pitch to play, play, play.

Upstairs the rooms are also upper class with spacious layout, lavish furnishing and all the electronics, big screens and Internet connections you expect in a first class resort today.

On Halloween weekend, the lobby was jammed with people in costumes, many of the women in get ups so sexy you might have thought the show girls stumbled off stage and came by for a drink with the hoi polloi. There was a long line every night to get into the LAVO night club and a bevy of diners choosing among a selection of restaurants.

It provided a classy contrast to the down and dirty feel of the characters in “Jersey Boys,” an appropriate metaphor for Las Vegas itself, where the beautiful buildings, soaring high rises, fabulous shops (including a whole floor of upscale retail inside the Palazzo) provide the façade for a city that still thrives on gambling, sex and sinful delights.

No wonder the boys from Jersey fit in so well.