That sound is propelled by Norona, whose breathtakingly pure falsetto sounds remarkably like Valli’s even as it remains unique. He sits at a piano and begins to sing, with the others joining in until, in just a few short verses, they’ve discovered their defining sound.
Or consider what happens when Bob Gaudio (Reichard), who - often in partnership with producer Bob Crewe - will become the group’s hit-making songwriter, first tests the group on a song. At the moment Valli is asked to join the band for a song during a local gig, for instance, the girls in the joint suddenly become more interested because of the cute lead singer. The scenes are stock anecdotes from any number of biopics. In this case, the dreamers are a bunch of budding hoodlums from the Newark, N.J., area who, as Tommy DeVito (Hoff), the group’s early ringleader, informs us in a thick Jersey accent, “want sump’n better.”Īgainst a setting (by Klara Zieglerova) of drab, industrial-looking metal and chain-link, Act 1 focuses on the long, hard road of finding the right mix of personnel and settling on a name (watch for the clever bit of business involving a malfunctioning neon bowling-alley sign). “Jersey Boys” repeats a tale we’ve heard time and again - namely, the American dream in which talent and willpower save people from dead-end lives. But when the connecting material calls attention to itself, as this rushed, cliche-ridden jumble too often does, it dulls an otherwise highly polished production.
Robert Spencer as his bandmates - is flowing, “Jersey Boys” builds to stratospheric levels of excitement. When the music - re-created with stunning vocal verisimilitude by David Norona as Frankie Valli and Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Therein lies one of this show’s main problems.