Lyceum, Sheffield – until Saturday 4th March 2023
Reviewed by Alison Beaumont
4****
Jersey Boys is a jukebox musical by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. The show documents the real life story of the creation, success and breakup of the 1960’s group The Four Seasons (Frankie Valli, Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi), who later became Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons.
The show starts with a Rap to “Oh What a Night” which was very different and something I had never heard before.
The first act is fast paced with regards to telling the story of how the Four Seasons came to be but is quite slow with regards to engaging the audience. At times it was difficult to hear some of the dialect but I think this could have been down to microphone issues.
In my opinion the show comes to life when the Four Seasons donned on their red jackets and sang “Sherry” followed by “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man” and then the show went from strength to strength and showed the actors enjoyment.
Frankie Valli the most well-known member of the band was played by Michael Pickering and boy what a range of vocals he has. The high-pitched recognisable tone was amazing. I particularly liked the song “My Eyes Adored You” which started with Frankie and saw Mary Delgado (Frankie’s wife played by Emma Crossley) singing a little before being joined by the rest of the Four Seasons.
Bob Gaudio played by Blair Gibson who writes may of the songs for the band covered the song “December 1963 (Oh What a Night)” exceptionally well.
Tommy Devito (Dalton Wood) and Nick Massi (Christopher Short) made up the rest of The Four Seasons group.
The second act was started by another musical rendition of “Oh What a Night”, definitely a song to get you in the mood.
I enjoyed “I Love you Baby” when the brass instruments were on a higher level on the stage.
This show for me was all about the songs and I could quite happily have listened to many more of their famous tracks. Overall, it is definitely worth seeing if only to be transported back in time.