Post 462 - May 22, 2022

Jersey Boys, the Musical, ends its monumental New York run this afternoon. It has possibly had a bigger influence on my life than anything else I could point to.

Jersey Boys is not a musical about the music of the Four Seasons any more than Mamma Mia is a musical about the music of ABBA. Both became massive internationally successful hits because they told a simple and universal story and happened upon the perfect soundtrack to accompany it.

Movie Rom-Coms all have the same story: one person meets another person, they fall in love (whether they realize it, themselves or not,) they become separated by some obstacle, they overcome that obstacle and are eventually reunited. Even if it ends tragically like Romeo and Juliet, it’s the same story. At the end, though the two of them realize it when it’s too late, they are, nonetheless, reunited. We will happily watch that same story over and over again in many different guises.

Occasionally, when all the elements all fall into line, a particular Rom-Com will ignite and become a sensation. When that happens, countless others will then try and replicate its success and mostly fail in the attempt.

When Mamma Mia opened it spurred a wave of so-called Juke Box musicals that all tried to replicate its formula. They failed because they never realized that however ridiculous the story of Mamma Mia is, that was what people cared about. The music and the audience’s love of that music took it to that next stratospheric level but that almost certainly would never would have happened had the same team of creatives just tried to tell the story of ABBA. Yes, the Mamma Mia story line is ridiculous on the surface, but emotionally, it’s surprisingly solid.

Jersey Boys happened upon a story that turned out to resonate with everybody in 2004/2005. Four guys, each vividly drawn characters with clear goals and obstacles, can only achieve what they want as a group. They achieve it, but then they can’t hold on to success. The very things that they brought to the group that made it work, are the things that eventually drive them apart. That story was what people wanted to see. And then there was the music.

The rights holders of the Four Seasons music like the rights holders of the ABBA music made much more money with said music in its musical theatre form than they ever did with its initial release. Unfathomable amounts more. It is no wonder that any artist or group with a catalog, of hits then tried to replicate that success. Most didn’t succeed in the way that Jersey Boys or Mamma Mia did because they never achieved that first level. They didn’t have a story that anyone cared about. They started with the music thinking that a solid score was enough. It isn’t.

A hit musical doesn’t need a complex story - in fact a complex story usually gets in the way. The story doesn’t even need to particularly make much intellectual sense, but it does need to make emotional sense. However stupid the premise, you must make the audience care about the characters. If you can’t do that then the greatest music in the world won’t help.

Merrily We Roll Along is one of Stephen Sondheim’s most beloved scores but the show, itself, never quite works because we don’t root for the characters. We listen to the music and subconsciously our minds fill in a better story. How can this not be the greatest show ever? People start to think that the show is fixable and dive in and try again. But there’s that book.

Knowing how important story is, it should be easy to replicate the success of Jersey Boys and Mamma Mia, right? Alas, that isn’t the case. If anyone could predict what would be a hit, every show would explode across the planet. It’s a roll of the dice. Even if you get past the greedy estates who are just trying to cash in on their dead artists’ successes and manage to tell an honest to god story without their interference, there is a magical extra something that can’t be planned and can only be hoped for that needs to be added into the mix. That elusive something is what drives everyone forward. Like that desperate cigarette-fueled wraith glued to the same slot machine for smoky days and nights on end hoping for a payday, teams of otherwise rational creative people will pour everything they have into a collection of music chartbusters hoping against hope for a hit.

If you are lucky enough to hit, there is still a shelf life to it. Every successful mega-musical has a beginning, middle and end. The beginning is as explosive and glorious as a massive fireworks display. The middle is a sky filled with its bright rays of light and the end is a long, protracted fizzling out.

When I was in High School, A Chorus Line opened and changed the world. You couldn’t get a ticket to it. Eventually, it was a staple on the half-price TKTS booth. There were two-fers for it everywhere. Two-fers were paper coupons that you could take to the box office and buy two tickets for the price of one. They sat on the countertops of every neighborhood deli in midtown New York. They were handy for scribbling notes if you happened to remember something while you were standing in line. Cats also took over the world for a time. Then two-fers for it started appearing and eventually most everyone lost interest. Both shows slowly dwindled away as everyone whose interest had been sparked saw them and the world moved on to the next new thing.

What happened in those theatres during those final months and weeks, though, changed people’s lives. I know someone who was one of the last people if not the last person who went into the production of A Chorus Line before its run ended on Broadway. I am now working with someone on The Karate Kid who was one of the last if not the last person who went into the Broadway production of Cats. Their lives were forever changed by those experiences. That the timing of their debuts was at the tail end of their show’s runs did not make them any less magical or transformational for them. Audiences who saw those shows for the first time in their final weeks were just as swept away by them as the audiences were on opening night. The only difference was that at the end, they were surrounded by too many empty seats.

Jersey Boys is playing its final performance in New York tonight. The last tendrils of its starry light are beginning to flicker out. Like A Chorus Line and Cats and Mamma Mia, it will likely tour for years to come in ever more portable versions. That the bells and whistles will be fewer and fewer out on the road won’t matter because at the end of the day, what people want to experience is the story, not the bells and whistles. The smaller the physical production the deeper that the show will be able to reach into the country. And there will always be that glorious music.

These last few months of the Off-Broadway run have given some incredibly talented performers an opportunity to make their New York debuts. Some of them who joined the show after I left, I don’t know, but remember from past auditions. Many of them, however, I do know from either working with them on the boat version of the show or on something else. That they were able to have that experience before the show closed will change their lives.

COVID spread through our community as it spread everywhere but not all of what happened, as a result, was bad. Countless talented people were called upon to join the show temporarily to fill in for ailing cast members. They had the experience of being a part of the New York company that they might never have had otherwise. I know that nobody who was part of any audience for this final stretch of its run ever saw anything less than an exemplary performance from anybody there. I didn’t watch the performances, but I guarantee you that I am right.

The final casts of A Chorus Line and Cats and this final cast of Jersey Boys were and are performers at the top of their games. The same, I should say, holds true for everybody backstage. Many of them were or are at the beginning of their careers. Some of tonight’s company of Jersey Boys will continue as performers and stage technicians and some may leave the business and do other things. Whichever of those things happens, the experience that they have had doing the show will have changed the trajectory of their own stories forever.

All of us in show business - onstage and off - are storytellers. When we are lucky enough to be working on a show that tells as good a story as Jersey Boys does, it allows us to fully do what we are meant to do. This single bottle rocket may be whistling out its final note, but the next one’s fuse has just been lit. The one after that is being taken out of its wrapper. The evening’s display isn’t over yet by a long shot.

I am so proud to have been a part of the journey of Jersey Boys. I am beyond proud of the distance the people whose journey’s I have had a hand in have come. To all of you who are in the show, tell the story tonight as you have always done. It’s an excellent story with an excellent soundtrack and you are all perfect in your parts.

This isn’t the end by any stretch of the imagination. Something larger than a show has been created by everyone involved in Jersey Boys over the countless years in productions all over the world: yes, it’s a family.

And, of course, as it says in the story, family is everything.

Everyone who has ever done the show in some fashion or other will be there with you, this final cast, in spirit tonight - none more than me. So, celebrate, and go kick it in the ---

(My recent EDI training does not allow me to complete that sentence.)