By the time this show opened in London, I had heard a lot about it – it did win the Tony after all – and I had the cast recording, but I still didn’t actually know that much about what happened during the show. That’s because in this show the songs don’t tell the story – they are part of the story, but the lyrics don’t usually have anything to do with what is happening at the time. In that way it’s different from all of the Mamma Mia imitators out there, but also different from most traditional musicals.
The show is broken down into four parts, with each of the guys from the group taking a turn in narrating the events. I thought it was an interesting structure, and for the most part worked well in developing the characters. The only downside was that it took a long time to get to know the characters that narrated later in the show – for example, Frankie Valli doesn’t speak directly to the audience until the last quarter of the show, so for the first 3/4, you don’t really get that much of an idea of who he is or what his motivations are. Personally I probably would have liked the narration split up a bit more, but it does work as it is, and others would probably disagree with me!
Another thing that is split up in the show is the songs. Often the group will start singing, then break for some narration/explanation of the scene, and then resume singing. This really frustrated the woman sitting behind me at this performance, who wondered at intermission why they couldn’t just sing a whole song. And again, I understand the narrative necessity of it (since the lyrics aren’t telling the story, you need to have some other explanation), but I had to agree with her that it did often break up the flow of the song. On the other hand, as my friend Karen pointed out, if you want to just listen to the songs, you can always go see a Four Seasons concert!
The London cast was really fantastic all around. Not having seen the Broadway cast, I can’t compare, but I have absolutely no complaints with any of the performances, and Ryan Molloy doing Frankie Valli’s voice was very impressive. They added in a couple of explanatory sentences about some of the references for the UK audience, but otherwise there were no major revisions from the original production.
As you can probably already tell from the above, I had mixed feelings about the show overall (“I liked it, but…”). I must also mention that I had just flown in from Sweden that afternoon after my flight was cancelled the previous night, so I was quite tired and that may have affected my ability to just get lost in the story. I don’t think it will ever be one of my favourites, but it’s certainly interesting, and especially if you are a fan of this music in the first place, is an enjoyable evening in the theatre.
The cast: (in order of appearance)
Frankie Vallie |
RYAN MOLLOY |
Bob Gaudio |
STEPHEN ASHFIELD |
Nick Massi |
PHILIP BULCOCK |
Tommy DeVito |
GLENN CARTER |
Bob Crewe |
SIMON ADKINS |
Mary Delgado (and others) |
SUZY BASTONE |
Francine (and others) |
MICHELLE FRANCIS |
Joe Pesci (and others) |
JYE FRASCA |
Barry (and others) |
TEE JAYE |
Donnie & Knuckles (and others) |
TOM LORGAN |
Gyp DeCarlo (and others) |
STUART MILLIGAN |
Lorraine (and others) |
AMY PEMBERTON |
Norm Waxman (and others) |
JOSEPH PROUSE |
Hank Majewski (and others) |
GRIFFIN STEVENS |