OH, WHAT A NIGHT – JERSEY BOYS COMES TO PLAYHOUSE SQUARE!

Photo: (l to r) Steve Gouveia, Erik Bates, Christopher Kale Jones and Andrew Rannells
Credit: Chris Bennion

The critics are raving, the audiences are screaming for more, and Cleveland gets five weeks of “genuine show business magic” when JERSEY BOYS, the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, comes to Playhouse Square June 18 – July 20, 2008 as the final show in the ’07-’08 KeyBank Broadway Series.

JERSEY BOYS won four 2006 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, and continues to set new weekly box office records both in New York – where it has remained among the five top grossing shows on Broadway since opening in November, 2005 – and in every tour stop or “sit-down” it plays.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, JERSEY BOYS is “a first-rate piece of Americana as well as a backstage musical that shines with intelligence and wit. It’s not just about the music – and this is saying something in a show that features 33 songs, nearly all of them guaranteed to have you dancing in your seat.”

JERSEY BOYS is the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons: Frankie Valli, Bob Gaudio, Tommy DeVito and Nick Massi. It tells how a group of blue-collar boys from the wrong side of the tracks became one of the biggest American pop music sensations of all time. They wrote their own songs, invented their own sounds, and sold 175 million records worldwide – all before they were 30.

A musical extravaganza told in documentary style, the show features hits like “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” “Walk Like a Man,” and “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You,” with a large company of 19 cast members and a 10-piece band.

The production stars Christopher Kale Jones (Frankie Valli), Erik Bates (Tommy DeVito), Steve Gouveia (Nick Massi), and Andrew Rannells (Bob Gaudio), with Jonathan Hadley and Joseph Siravo.

Directed by two-time Tony Award winner Des McAnuff, JERSEY BOYS was written by Academy Award winner Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, with music by Bob Gaudio, lyrics by Bob Crewe, and choreography by Sergio Trujillo.

Robert Hurwitt of the San Francisco Chronicle wrote “It isn’t every musical that gets stopped by three prolonged ovations midway through the first act.” But maybe Richard Corliss of Time Magazine put it best: “[JERSEY BOYS] will run for centuries!”

Synopsis

JERSEY BOYS is the story of four sons from four different Italian immigrant families. They went from singing on street corners in the housing projects of northern New Jersey to singing on national television as their songs hit the top of the charts.

Their rise to the top was fueled by talent, street smarts and heart, plus a sound they developed that was theirs and theirs alone. However, even their dramatic upward rise could not free them from the poverty and mob connections of their early years.

They named themselves The Four Seasons, and their story evolves as four stories, each representing a “season” of their career, and each told by a different member of the group. Spring = their beginnings, “doo-wopping” under a streetlamp in the evening; Summer = the high point of their commercial success; Fall = success taking its toll – lives and marriages begin to unravel; Winter = solitude, sorrow, and reflection – but the promise of another spring.