Opening Night of a Six-Day Stand in Louisville: Jersey Boys

The 20th-anniversary tour played opening night at a packed Whitney Hall

The 20th-anniversary tour of Jersey Boys opened its Louisville stand on Tuesday at a packed Whitney Hall, and the evening began with two short delays. From the stage, the company announced that Andrew Martin Maguire would play Joe Pesci. Maguire is billed on this tour as Frankie Valli at certain performances; Grant Weathington is the billed Pesci. Coby Oram went on as Frankie. Once the show started, the substitution settled in without further explanation, and the night belonged to Oram, the book and of course, the songs. The rest was magic.

Jersey Boys, with a book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, music by Bob Gaudio–the same Bob Gaudio in the Four Seasons group– and lyrics by Bob Crewe, tells the rise of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons from four guys out of New Jersey to a radio sound that would not quit, and then the fractures underneath the harmonies. Des McAnuff directs and Sergio Trujillo choreographs, the same team billed from the original Broadway production, which opened in 2005. The tour is presented here by PNC Broadway in Louisville. It runs about two hours and 30 minutes with one intermission, and it is recommended for ages 12 and up. The language is the authentic, “profane Jersey” the warning promises.

The structure is the show’s best trick. Each of the four Seasons takes a season of the story, so the same rise is told four ways: Tommy DeVito’s hustler persona, Bob Gaudio’s songwriter’s craft, Nick Massi’s dry exit, and Frankie’s account of the personal price he paid for the “voice”.. Harry Sperduto (Tommy DeVito), Peyton Schoenhofer (Songwriter Bob Gaudio) and Owen McCredie (Nick Massi) carry those three other characters in the group. Oram (Frankie Valli) has the falsetto part the plot revolves around, comprise the sound the group is built to protect. Maguire’s Pesci is the eager kid at the edge of the circle, but while the character seems like a Happy Days skit, Pesci is the one who makes the introduction that changes the room, and like the rock in the road that you collide with on a dark night, sends the group careening into stardom.

Sixty years later, we’re paying to see the story. Around them, Eliza Levy’s Mary Delgado (Frankie’s wife), Alexis Aponte’s Lorraine (the long time girlfriend writer), Sarah Coleman’s Francine (Frankie’s daughter), Andrew Sattler’s Bob Crewe (the real life record producer, songwriter and manager who signed the Four Season), Jason Winfield’s Gyp DeCarlo, (the NJ Mob boss who acts as the unofficial protector of Frankie), and others mark the marriages, the music, the street and the money.

The personal heartbreak moments of both Delgado and Lorraine are clear, and as Frankie laments, “The last time I saw her… oh there was a couple of phone calls, and then, it’s like it never happened”, are just a part of the price for the voice.

The score does the talking. “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night),” “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” “Beggin’” and “Working My Way Back to You” arrive as the plot earns them, not as a concert list. The placement of these songs is surgical, just the right moment.

Whitney Hall, inside the Kentucky Center at 501 West Main Street, is the large room named for Robert S. Whitney, longtime conductor of the Louisville Orchestra. It opened in 1983 and holds roughly 2,400 to 2,480. On Tuesday the house was full, the sightlines were clean, and the sound carried the close harmony without smearing it. The Center sits on a lively stretch of West Main, near older rooms Louisville has brought back, including the Brown and the Palace. For a first look at this tour, the room did its job: the delay was brief, the cover was announced, and the songs landed where a packed house could hear them, and the performance was spellbinding.

You need to catch this show.

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