Renee Marino plays Mary Delgado, Frankie Valli’s first wife the national tour of Jersey Boys.
“The costumes in the show are endless,” Marino said. “It’s a girl’s dream…we get to play dress up.”
Visit WRAL.com for a fantastic backstage tour and interview with the Jersey Girls of the national tour: Renee Marino, Denise Payne, and Katie Tomlinson!
Celebrate Independence Day with the JERSEY BOYS! Yes, JERSEY BOYS cast members from Broadway, Chicago, Las Vegas, and national tour companies will be performing on ‘A Capitol Fourth’ tomorrow night between 8:00-9:30PM ET on PBS!
Listen to an amazing interview with Bob Gaudio on Radio Australia! Bob talks about his extraordinary career, including early days as a young musician, songwriter and performer in The Royal Teens; his career as the member of The Four Seasons; his musical projects outside of the group; working with the late Michael Jackson in the studio; the success of JERSEY BOYS; the upcoming JB movie; and more! Great stuff!
Jared Bradshaw, Michael Cunio, Styx founder Dennis DeYoung, Shonn Wiley, and Dominic Scaglione, Jr. at Broadway in Chicago Concert in the Park on June 29. (Photo courtesy of Larry Baker)
JERSEY BOYS Melbourne’s Four Seasons: Stephen Mahy (Bob Gaudio), Scott Johnson (Tommy DeVito), Glaston Toft (Nick Massi), and Bobby Fox (Frankie Valli)
Michael Lallo of The Age has a fascinating interview with Irish-born performer Bobby Fox, who will be playing the legendary singer Frankie Valli in the Melbourne production of JERSEY BOYS, which opens Saturday at the Princess Theatre.
Fox talks candidly with Lallo about growing up, becoming a dancer, moving to Australia, and the excitement and challenges of playing the role of Frankie Valli.
For the past three years he has lived in Melbourne, most recently playing the role of Eddie in Mamma Mia!. Naturally, he leapt at the chance to audition for Jersey Boys — only to make a hash of it.
“It was terrible,” he says, wincing at the memory. “I chose the wrong songs and I didn’t sing well because I was nervous. But fortunately there were a few people in the room for whom I had auditioned before and they knew that I wasn’t an idiot.”
So they gave him a second chance and he eventually landed the part.
Recently, he went to Las Vegas to meet Valli, whom he describes as a “nice, cool guy”. He also spent time with former Four Seasons member and songwriter Bob Gaudio.
“Bob said to me, ‘Frankie’s the kind of guy who could sing Mary Had a Little Lamb and have you in tears because of the way he interprets it’. But I don’t think about this role as me playing one of the most famous pop stars on the planet,” Fox says.
“That’s not how Frankie saw himself. He considered himself a worker. He was a blue-collar guy who came from nothing. All he had was ambition.”
Read the full story on TheAge.com.au.
JERSEY BOYS Broadway had another terrific box office week! The show grossed $1,151,195 and had a 101.2% attendance rate for the week ending June 28, 2009.
The 28 shows on the boards grossed $21,461,025, an increase of almost 3% over the previous week.
Below are the Top 10 Grosses from BroadwayWorld.com for the week ending June 28, 2009.
Broadway In Chicago, in partnership with the City of Chicago, presented the annual BROADWAY IN CHICAGO CONCERT IN THE PARK on Monday, June 29. This event featured some of Broadway’s hottest shows during the city’s legendary Taste of Chicago festival–including Chicago’s own Four Seasons and the full cast of JERSEY BOYS!
The concert was produced in partnership with the City of Chicago and hosted by ABC7’s Janet Davies and Jersey Boys’ Craig Laurie!
Photos courtesy of BroadwayWorld.com.
Las Vegas Sun reporter Joe Brown notes that when he heard that Michael Jackson had died, one of his first thoughts was of actor/singer/songwriter Erich Bergen, who plays the role of Four Seasons songwriter Bob Gaudio in “Jersey Boys” at the Palazzo. He knew Bergen would be taking the news harder than most.
Brown asked Erich to share his thoughts about the tragic loss of his musical hero, Michael Jackson. Below is an excerpt of Erich’s touching thoughts about the inspirational pop icon:
My parents didn’t know what to do with me, an only child who had more energy than a shaken can of Red Bull. “Sesame Street” did the trick for a little while, but I outgrew that by age 3. That’s when, in addition to cartoons and “Goodnight, Moon,” they showed me MTV and handed me Rolling Stone magazine. I suppose, looking back, they were desperate.
Soon my entire focus became fixated on one performer who dominated TV, magazines and every other form of entertainment. His name was Michael Jackson.
The first video of Michael’s I remember watching was “We Are the World,” his 1985 mega-anthem written with Lionel Richie and sung with 400 other people. I still credit my musical ear to that song. I used to sing it in full, imitating each performer’s unique voice, entertaining guests at my mother’s parties.
I became a total Michael nerd. I didn’t just own a copy of “Thriller” and watch the “Motown 25” TV special over and over again. By the time I was 14 years old, I had enough Michael Jackson memorabilia that the Village Voice did a feature on me for the paper’s “Money” column.
My love of everything Michael led me to discover a universe of music. His inspirations became mine. I studied Jackie Wilson and James Brown and by age 7 I knew the entire Motown catalog. Instead of an allowance, I got a new CD each week, and my musical world kept expanding. But I always came back to Michael.
Read Erich’s full tribute to the legendary Michael Jackson in the Las Vegas Sun.
Byron Woods of IndyWeek.com admits that his expectations for the touring version of Jersey Boys weren’t high, even though the original is continuing three-and-a-half-year run on Broadway and a bevy of awards, including the 2006 Tony for best musical. Besides, his most vivid childhood memory of The Four Seasons involve Frankie Valli’s overamplified falsetto drilling the lyrics “they don’t cry-ee-eye-ee-eye” into his skull from his cousin’s painfully lo-fi hi-fi during several hellish babysitting episodes. In short, not only was he not this show’s target audience, a part of him was actually dreading it a bit.
Well, the skeptical Woods was highly surprised! Wood states that JERSEY BOYS at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium is a canny, streamlined and extremely efficient little entertainment, one that’s managed to nimbly avoid most of the pitfalls of the genre while navigating what it freely admits is the broken pavement of a pop group’s hardly inevitable rise to stardom.
There’s no shortage of dramatic tension, since Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice’s book actually emphasizes the disagreements among the original band members. (Forget the script—the contract negotiations among these quarrelsome musicians must have been a diplomatic work of art.) Ultimately, each of the characters based on an original band member has his say, as the work weaves narrative and music sequences together. The show wisely omits repeated choruses and verses in several songs to maintain the undeniable propulsion that powers Jersey Boys through its impressive first act.
Read the full review at IndyWeek.com.
Lindsay Christians of 77Square.com wonders why she LOVES Jersey Boys:
I have heard it said that we fall in love because of how the other person makes us feel. That’s why I love “Jersey Boys.”
“Jersey Boys,” the story of the Four Seasons, is a polished, video-enhanced major musical running indefinitely at the Cadillac Theatre in Chicago. The marquee boasts that more than one million people have seen this production — the woman sitting in front of me at a recent matinee had already seen it three times. Unless she got a $25 rush seat, by my estimation, she paid more than $100 for each ticket. Ridiculous. Especially during a recession, what show is worth that?
But halfway through “Sherry,” fighting an urge to sing along, I begin to understand: “Jersey Boys” makes people happy.
The thing that makes me fall in love with “Jersey Boys” is the music. This was the music of my mother’s childhood and, by extension, my own. We sang along to “Dawn (Go Away)” on the way to the Baskin Robbins, made up dances in elementary school to “My Boyfriend’s Back,” teased my little sister with “Big Girls Don’t Cry” when she fussed as a toddler.
These songs, and Frankie Valli’s memorable voice, capture a part of the past that’s bright, buoyant, made sweeter by the patina of age. Nostalgia can be sweet: “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You” has never sounded so good.
As one born long past the Four Seasons’ heyday, I probably could not have listed more than the most famous Four Seasons tune — “Oh, What a Night,” and then that’s because it’s been excessively covered. Still, to my surprise, nearly every part of this ultra-polished, stylized musical hits some kind of chord.
So, what about YOU? Why do you love JERSEY BOYS and what keeps you coming back for more???
JB National Tour: Steve Gouveia, Joseph Leo Bwarie, Josh Franklin, and Matt Bailey (Photo Credit: Joan Marcus)
Robert W. McDowell of Classical Voice of North Carolina states, “Oh, what a show!”
When Broadway Series South booked the much-ballyhooed national tour of Jersey Boys for a four-week run at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium, expectations were stratospheric — and this explosive backstage musical about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons exceeded them. Indeed, there are more fireworks onstage than there are in a typical Fourth of July celebration.
According to McDowell, what sets Jersey Boys apart from the typical jukebox musical, with its contrived situations involving fictional characters, is that Jersey Boys is a frank retelling of the long, hard struggle of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons to achieve success as recording artists and live performers.
Triangle theatergoers, who frequently interrupted the June 26 performance with prolonged applause, will not soon forget this rags-to-riches story about the American super-group that provided so much of the soundtrack for Baby Boomers’ teenage years. Don’t miss it.
Read the entire review on CVNC.org.
Photo Credits: #2: Kerry Long; #3: Gary Goddard Agency; #4: Joan Marcus
As reported last night, JERSEY BOYS Toronto took home two Dora’s, including Best Actor in a Musical for Jeff Madden and the Best Directing Award for Des McAnuff.
Additionally, JERSEY BOYS won the Toronto Alliance for the Performing Arts’ Audience Choice Award!!
Congratulations to JB Toronto!
Robin Usher of The Age has the behind the scenes story of JERSEY BOYS–which opens on Saturday at the Princess Theatre in Melbourne. According to Usher, the songs were a given, but telling the Jersey Boys’ back story took courage.
Director Des McAnuff already had a reputation as a hitmaker when he agreed to take on the unfinished project that was to become the musical Jersey Boys, but he had no inkling that it would become “a juggernaut” until opening night.
“I had never seen anything like it,” he says. “We had to keep the box office open at interval so people could buy tickets for their friends.”
The premiere was at San Diego’s La Jolla Playhouse, where demand in the opening weeks was so strong they had to install a new phone system to deal with it. “This was an incredible response in California, which is Beach Boys territory. But I wasn’t cocky because I knew that nothing is guaranteed to succeed on Broadway.”
McAnuff’s original instincts were sound. The account of the rise and fall of the 1960s pop band, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, went on to win four Tony awards in New York, as well as London’s Olivier Award for best musical.
An original Four Seasons member, composer Bob Gaudio, who wrote Sherry while a teenager, had the idea of turning the band’s story into a musical after seeing the shows Smokey Joe’s Cafe and Mamma Mia.
“But I knew we could do something different, because we had such a strong story,” he says. “Everybody knows the music but I felt at least half the show had to be given over to telling the story.”
Read Usher’s full story on TheAge.com.au.
THIS JUST IN: The Star.com reports that Jersey Boys, the Tony-Award winning musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, earned two Doras, including directing honors for Des McAnuff and a performance award for Jeff Madden of the Toronto JB cast!
Congratulations to Des McAnuff, Jeff Madden, and to all of the JERSEY BOYS Toronto nominees!
Area critics are raving about the JERSEY BOYS national tour in Raleigh! Check these out!
Roy C. Dicks of NewsObserver.com praises the highly polished national tour. Those of a certain age who count the singular sound of the Four Seasons as part of their dating/mating rituals (and they filled Memorial Auditorium on Friday night) will get their money’s worth from these first-rate voices, led by Joseph Leo Bwarie’s laser-beam falsetto as Frankie Valli (Graham Fenton plays Valli matinees and Sunday evenings). Bwarie’s confident, stratospheric stylings in “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like A Man” are not mechanically imitated but vibrantly thrilling on their own. And when he finishes his tender rendition of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You,” his humble reaction to the mid-act standing ovation seems movingly genuine.
That’s not to say he shoulders the show alone. Josh Franklin as Bob Gaudio, the hit-making songwriter of the group, matches Bwarie in confidence and vocal talent (especially in his solo turn in “Oh What a Night”) and offers a winning stage presence. Matt Bailey’s Tommy DeVito and Steve Gouveia’s Nick Massi round out the quartet, infusing the foursome’s numbers with foot-tapping zing (and causing a lot of involuntary sing-alongs throughout the evening).
The crisp musical accompaniment, from onstage guitars, drums and brass to the additional instruments off stage (all honed to perfection by conductor Andrew Wilder) gives the show an undeniably rousing power.
Triangle Arts and Entertainment: Broadway Series South and the team led by Jim Lavery have outdone themselves once again, bringing to Raleigh a production that exceeds any found on Broadway! Jersey Boys traces the formation and rise to popularity of The Four Seasons, linking all the greatest hits you love to hear into a real story of music, friendship, love, hard times, and what it means to “come up together from the neighborhood.”
The show includes 33 songs of The Four Seasons, including “Earth Angel,” “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).” Joseph Leo Bwarie (Frankie) lights up the stage with his impeccable voice, topping the original Frankie Valli. He is backed up by an energetic and multi-talented cast - who sing, act, dance, and yes – play their own instruments! (One cast member mentioned playing the guitar was a big part of the audition.) It is clear they love what they do, and the audiences love them for it.
Michael Lomenda, Jeff Madden, Quinn VanAntwerp and Jeremy Kushnier have been nominated for Dora Awards this evening. (Photo Credit: Joan Marcus/Dancap Productions)
The 2009 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, celebrating excellence in Toronto’s performing arts community, will be handed out TONIGHT and JERSEY BOYS Toronto has been nominated for SEVEN awards!
Below is the list of Toronto JERSEY BOYS’ Dora nominations:
Congratulations and best wishes tonight to all of the Toronto JERSEY BOYS nominees!
Ian Cuthbertson of The Australian has an in-depth interview with Bob Gaudio, who seems genuinely excited about the Melbourne debut of JERSEY BOYS, which will be the seventh major production of the show after those in several US cities, a Canadian company, and the London production.
Though he had assistance with lyrics from producer Bob Crewe, the hits all came from the pen of founding member and Four Seasons keyboardist Bob Gaudio, then aged 18. Simple but distinctive melodies, vamped rhythms, naturally sung verses and soaring falsetto choruses, not to mention the close harmonies and tribal handclaps, were the essence of the Four Seasons sound.
Legend has it that Gaudio wrote Sherry, his first worldwide smash, in just 15 minutes. The self-effacing songwriter confirms the myth.
“I know it sometimes sounds like a bad movie, but it’s absolutely true,” he says on the phone from New York before his departure for Melbourne. “I had 15 minutes of not much to do before a rehearsal and it just happened.
“Sometimes that will happen but then there will be times when somebody has to lock me in a room to finish a project. It can be torture. It’s not always a joy. It can be joyous when it’s finished and you’re happy with the result. But it is work,” Gaudio says.
Coincidentally for such a blazing tribute to all things American, the show opens here on July 4, American Independence Day. “That’s got to be a good omen,” Gaudio says.
Read the full fantastic interview on The Australian website.
For the fourth straight week, JERSEY BOYS Original Cast Recording remains in the Number Two position on the Billboard Top Cast Album chart. This marks the 180th consecutive week that the Grammy-winning recording has been on the chart.
Posts Via RSS:
