Review: Jersey Boys reaches high and doesn’t let go

REVIEW: Jersey Boys, Invercargill Musical Theatre, Playing: Civic Theatre until July 22.

Think you have better things to do than check out Jersey Boys? Ah, forgeddaboudit.

Plenty of musical theatre shows have high points. Precious few demand this many. Even fewer reach them.

Invercargill Musical Theatre’s largest production surely does.

This is, after all, the story of the true-life career of the powerful falsettoed voice of hitmaker Frankie Valli and his blue collar New Jersey mates, the Four Seasons.

The risk was always going to be that it became a shrill show. Far from it, in both the performances and the storyline, the audience is treated to a satisfying range of the high singing, high life hi-jinks, and lowdown, bassy business to keep everything grounded.

The performances work. They just do. Max Beal has the chops to enter the Frankie stratosphere, and as his bandmates, Travis Luke, Daniel Monteath and Dryw​ McArthur all step up dramatically as well as sonically, as strong characters in their own right, in a storyline that has a lot to say about blue-collar loyalty.

Not that these guys are saintly. And although their misbehaviour is oftentimes funny, there’s also varying degrees of criminality and, in the treatment of women, verging on reprehensible. But look, it was a hard fame to handle.

Turns out there are three rules. You don’t lie to your mother. You don’t tell the truth to your wife. And … well the third one is a Jersey thing.

Ultimately it’s probably the songs audiences will remember and they come fast and plentiful, time and again bringing chimes of recognition for those who might not know the performers as stars.

I do hope you like them. Because I promise you, you’ll be stuck with them in your head for a very long time.

The experience for the audience is one of an extraordinarily fluent and dramatic slipstream, a sense of momentum that reaches a full detonation as the band truly hits its straps in the American Bandstand years, with expertly well-handled set changes and production clevernesses.

Having shifted from hard-case to thrilling, the latter stages of the story up the drama and the conflict, but that is carried off so well – behind their broad Jersey accents, these guys can act – that the effect is resonant rather than glum.

And the ending shreds any initial sense that this is simply a masculine story. Ashleigh Reid as Frankie’s wife Mary, Emmy Roderique as reporter-girlfriend Lorraine, and Meadow Bodkin Allen as Frankie’s daughter Francine, emerge powerfully amid all that storming testosterone.

Dave McMeeking is captivating as the godfatherish Gyp DeCarlo – a man who deeply loves his mother – and Caleb Bell has a fine old time playing a yappy true life character who many people will be astonished to learn was a significant player in the true story.

Michael Buick’s band and the dancers did the era proud.

Afterwards, pick a favourite song. I dare you. I double dare you.