The music is familiar, but the rags-to-riches story behind “Jersey Boys” may not be.
The Four Seasons — Frankie Valli, Tommy DeVito, Bob Gaudio and Nick Massi — were working-class guys from the Newark suburb of Bellevue, struggling to survive in a neighborhood where drugs, crime, mob influence and poverty were a way of life.
In the book, “Jersey Boys — The Story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons,” author and theater critic David Cote said music was a way out for kids with talent.
“If you were young, poor and Italian-American in urban New Jersey, you had few options: mob up, punch the clock, or grab a guitar.”
Actor Deven May plays Tommy DeVito in the national tour of “Jersey Boys” opening Tuesday at the Orange County Performing Artscenter.
He believes the show strikes a chord with audiences weary of what seems a cultural tendency to build up and then tear down beloved celebrities.
“Back then, we loved heroes,” May said over the phone from San Diego, where the show is currently being staged. “We liked to watch people rise up from common [circumstance] to stardom.”
Knowing DeVito was in the audience when the show opened last year in San Francisco “freaked me out a little,” May said, but he received the ultimate “Jersey boy” compliment when DeVito came up on stage after the performance.
“He came on during the curtain call — this bulldog of a man — and said ‘I’m so [expletive] proud of you,’” May said.
Audiences are also responding to the music, in a show that May described as a play and a concert.
“When people get into that concert mood, they let loose a little,” he said.
Christopher Kale Jones, the actor playing Frankie Valli, said songs in the first act — the group’s big hits performed back to back — created a response none of the performers were prepared for.
“After ‘Sherry,’ ‘Big Girls Don’t Cry’ and ‘Walk Like A Man,’ the audience exploded, and we were all truly taken aback.”
The audience is familiar with the music, Jones said from San Diego. “They love to hear their favorites, and the music of the Four Seasons is really turning out to be eternal, exposing new generations to the sound.”
