There is a particular kind of pleasure that comes from just giving yourself to a show because it’s so seamlessly assured and stimulating. It’s what folks are talking about when they say they were spellbound by a performance. For almost all its running time, that’s the kind of electricity that this Arts Club production of Jersey Boys runs on.
The song list is ridiculous: “Sherry”, “Big Girls Don’t Cry”, “Walk Like a Man”. The hits just keep coming. The three I’ve mentioned pile on top of one another in rapid succession.
And everybody who’s performing in the Vancouver cast of this jukebox-musical about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons can sing — really sing. Elliot Lazar, who’s playing Valli, doesn’t possess Valli’s seductively sweet tone, but his pitch is perfect. As Bob Gaudio, the guy who wrote The Four Seasons’ hits, Jason Sakaki is, in many ways the anchor of this production: his character handles a lot of the most crucial narration, and Sakaki delivers a performance of supreme confidence and charisma — vocally and as an actor. With his crazy-deep bass and excellent comic timing, Tanner Zerr makes his mark as Four Season Nick Massi. And Darren Martens is completely in the groove as the complicated Tommy DeVito, the guy who pulled the Four Seasons together, but couldn’t lift himself out of his Jersey-tough-guy past.
The book, which was written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, is as slick as a new Cadillac. Because it covers so much territory it is, necessarily episodic. We follow threads about Valli’s troubled marriage, for instance, and Gaudi’s transformation from youth to keen-eyed businessman. There’s lots of comedy — much of it, bizarrely, derived from threats by gangsters. And the tension that holds it together is the conflict between DeVito, who wants to run the show, and Valli, who is the show.
This formula doesn’t always hold. For at least 15 minutes at the end of the long first act, I was thinking, “When is this thing going to end? Are we ever going to get an intermission?” And, near the end of Act 2, a tragedy in Valli’s life is handled perfunctorily.
But I still came away feeling good about this show. Partly that’s because the talent in director Julie Tomaino’s production runs so deep. Emma Pedersen brings dramatic depth to her performance as Valli’s wife, Mary Delgado. Caleb Di Pomponio is hilarious as an irrepressible Joe Pesci. (Yes, Joe Pesci.) And Graham Coffeng is solidly eccentric as music producer Bob Crewe. I also stayed (mostly) mesmerized because of the pace Tomaino sets. It’s never frantic; individual moments are ripe, but they’re never belaboured. And the stage pictures are constantly changing: in many of the musical numbers, even Sakaki’s Gaudio is wheeling around his keyboard.
I didn’t leave Jersey Boys a changed person — there’s not a lot of thematic depth — but I did leave feeling like I’d had a very satisfying theatrical meal.
JERSEY BOYS Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Music by Bob Gaudio. Directed by Julie Tomaino. On Wednesday, September 11. An Arts Club Theatre Company production running at the Stanley Industrial Alliance Theatre until October 20. Tickets and information
PHOTO CREDIT: Darren Martens, Tanner Zerr, Jason Sakaki, and Elliot Lazar literally phoning in a hit in Jersey Boys (Photo by Moonrider Productions for the Arts Club Theatre Company)
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