Ever been to Jersey?

Have you ever been to Jersey?  I mean really to Jersey… not just drive through presuming you know what it has (or doesn’t have) to offer?

I’m not talking about the island. Or the cows.  I mean New Jersey; the place just out of shot in many films and sitcoms.  

As far as I can tell, all most people know of Jersey is Newark Airport and the tunnel drive from Hoboken to Manhattan; the town made famous by the birth of Frank Sinatra.  Big fans realize other Jersey greats include Bruce Springsteen, Whitney Houston, Queen Latifah, Bon Jovi and Count Basie, but outside America or the county border few will know much more. 

The same could be said about Jersey Boys, the musical.  I’m an avid theatre goer. I love musicals.  I see much of what comes out.  Yet it took me until a little over a week ago to get to the Prince Edward Theatre (one of the West End’s nicest venues and the Delfont Mackintosh flagship) to see the show which has been running the best part of five years. 

Why?  Well, I was living in Italy when it opened so I missed a lot of the hype.  I have seen a lot of retrospectives about rock stars and genre-specific-musicals.  I’ve been in them too.  So, to be frank, I figured it could wait.  Then as time went on, and I came and went from London to Firenze, Sydney to London, where there’s always so much on offer, I never quite got around to it.  I was also a bit like one of the writers of this hit production, Rick Elice, who Mark Shenton humorously reports in the programme notes was originally more familiar with the Baroque suite than the twentieth-century rock group with the same name.  Many in the audience the night I saw the show must have been guilty of the same ignorance, for we laughed at the joke about the other Four Seasons; made all the more effective, by not mentioning Vivaldi by name.  

Yet the thing about Jersey Boys, written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, director Des McAnuff, and choregrapher Sergio Trujillo, is that you get far more than what it ‘says on the box’ - far more than a linear retrospective and collection of old songs.   You get to live and breathe the road the four boys took from Jersey, gig to gig, hope to hope, cock-up to cock-up, victory to victory, as they built and worked to maintain the group which became the Four Seasons and, later, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. 

Whatever your age, the familiarity and quality of the music led by Dan Wilkinson will surprise you. The quantity and pace is impressive too, weaved effortlessly into the fabric of the piece. Yet the writers, creative team, performers and band do far more than tip their hats to a musical legend – with compelling honesty and empathy, they uncover and explore for the audience the many elements of character and circumstance which had to be overcome and juggled to attain professional success… the hard work and sacrifices, the drama and heartbreak, in effect, the price which had to be paid by these four men and those who loved them in order to attain relative security…  long before they reached legendary status or found personal reward.  In this, Jersey Boys is first and foremost a play, a piece of drama served and embellished by tightly-packed music and movement, and I loved its commitment to going deeper than I, or perhaps many, had expected.

This brings me back to the ‘real Jersey’: the large county some will know from work in, or association with, the many industries whose head offices flourish in Orange County.  My cousin was the CEO of a large pharmaceutical company based in the attractive upper central part of Jersey, so I’ve seen the large houses, cultivated lawns and huge swimming pools of the business men and women who happily live and work there, playing golf, making deals, jogging through parks and forests, before tripping off to Manhattan to pursue all manner of other entertainments.  Wonderful hosts they all were too from memory… one chap unveiling at a party a surprise birthday present for his wife… a Mercedez sports.  Well, that’s not something you’re likely to forget, right?!

My Jersey visits weren’t all elegant.  I also hung out in suburban, middle-class Trenton, where I found the locals polite, friendly and well educated, and the houses in tree-lined streets surprisingly large and furnished with enormous American basements.  (Seriously, I’ve known five students to live in smaller spaces than my friend had for mere storage, heating pipes and laundry.)  Were the intellectual and artistic characters I met in Trenton fuelled by their commuter-belt-proximity to New York?  Certainly the grand pianos I found myself leaning on were surrounded by people who were not only educated, talented and intellectually nuanced (on a broad range of topics), but well stocked with show tunes and ready to perform.  So how could I complain when a first class road and the Hoboken tunnel were the only things separating us from Broadway?

I admit this is just my experience.  And as you’ll learn from Jersey Boys, if you make the wise decision to go, every story can be told from multiple angles and quite varied perception.  Over the course of the evening you will hear episodes in the life of the Four Seasons introduced and explained by Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi, each bringing to it their own colour and individuality, their own version of ‘the truth’.  Along with exceptionally well-arranged songs and choreography, it is this dramatic aspect, the soulful, searching aspect of Jersey Boys which is so satisfying.

And now I remember why I have such a positive memory of Jersey: because when I was there in 1998 I had the immense pleasure of attending Lilith Fair – the enormous summer music festival produced by the gifted Sarah McLachlan to honour and present female musicians and band-leaders to the rock-loving world while raising significant funds for north American women’s charities.  In every sense Lilith Fair was a spectacular experience – the most relaxed and friendly bonhomie of any outdoor music festival I’ve attended, multiple stages, maximum sunshine, shorts and t-shirts, splashing water and laughter (to deal with the heat which ultimately resulted in wet t-shirts), girl power in the audience, and female greats on the same stage such as Sarah McLachlan and Sheryl Crow; and Bonnie Raitt, Emmylou Harris and Sinéad O’Connor to name a few.  It was an unequalled social and musical celebration, working on so many levels - allowing us to identify with one-another, celebrate that commonality, and feel fantastic about ourselves.

And that’s what I got out of Jersey Boys too, an unexpectedly intimate and meaningful encounter, where we all left the theatre satisfied and humming.  For me it was:

        You're just too good to be true
        Can't take my eyes off of you
        You'd be like heaven to touch
        I wanna hold you so much…

 

While one of my friends was singing:

       My eyes adored you

      Though I never laid a hand on you
       My eyes adored you
       Like a million miles away
       From me you couldn’t see
       How I adored you
      So close, so close
      And yet so far…

 

‘Cause like the Four Seasons you’ll each get your own story out of Jersey.

 

 

Recommendations:

à         www.delfontmackintosh.co.uk  

à         www.jerseyboyslondon.com 

        à         www.ryanmolloy.com   (plays Frankie Valli in London)

       à         www.jonleeofficial.com   (plays Frankie Valli in London)

       à         www.eddpost.co.uk  (plays Bob Gaudio in London)

       à         www.jonboydon.com  (plays Tommy DeVito in London)

à         www.gameforfame.co.uk  (plays Nick Massi in London)