The New York Times - Recommended
"...In a year in which one pop-songbook show after another has thudded and died, "Jersey Boys," a shrink-wrapped musical biography of the pop group the Four Seasons, passes as silver instead of as the chrome-plated jukebox that it is. Unlike the recent Broadway flops, this show has the advantage of featuring singers that actually sound like the singers they are portraying and a technology-enhanced band that approximates the original sound of their music. Scriptwriters Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice provide some likably sassy dialogue as they chart the evolution of their main characters from street kids in the urban wastelands of New Jersey to pop gods enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But while "Jersey Boys" is based on fact, it rarely leaps over the cliches of a regulation grit-to-glamour blueprint."
NY Daily News - Recommended
"...
Unlike other jukebox musicals, which use a group's hit songs to tell some other story, "Jersey Boys" simply narrates the career of Valli, his friends and the man who wrote their successes, Bob Gaudio... Sometimes such a technique can be deadly, but the book, by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, handles everything with such lightness and finesse that you get caught up in their story. This is in no small part due to the skill of the cast under Des McAnuff's canny direction."
Associated Press - Recommended
"...Jersey Boys" wears its jukebox-musical credentials without apology. And well it should. When it sings and moves, this musical biography of pop icons Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, which opened Sunday at Broadway's August Wilson Theatre, really rocks. The energy is unstoppable, particularly from the four lead performers -- Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard, J. Robert Spencer and the amazing John Lloyd Young as Valli. Only when it attempts to tell the story of the lads' rise to fame and fortune does "Jersey Boys" occasionally falter, sinking into a soapy resume of their lives."
Hollywood Reporter - Recommended
"...This latest example of the burgeoning jukebox musical genre eschews the common method of shoehorning pop songs into a contrived plot. Instead, it relates the rags-to-riches story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons, taking care along the way to provide pitch-perfect versions of their many chart-topping hits. Unfortunately, the group's story is not particularly interesting, at least compared to those sagas related in such recent musical biopics as "Ray" and "Walk the Line.""
Vulture - Recommended
"Jersey Boys may aim only to be a shallow, big-budget, crowd-pleasing jukebox musical, but it's a model of the genre. The real source of the show's power—obvious as it sounds—is the songs. McAnuff shows a rare, laudable willingness to stick his finger in the electrical socket of pop music, to take full advantage of the band's potent catalogue."
Bloomberg - Highly Recommended
"...
`Jersey Boys,' at the August Wilson Theatre, is quite simply the best jukebox or song-catalog musical so far. It rousingly recreates the catchy songs, convoluted lives and roller-coaster careers of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Never having heard more of the group than their names, and lacking all interest in them and their music, I entered the theater a skeptic, but promptly turned believer."
Variety - Recommended
"...O.K, so the book is clunky, the backstory is emotionally skeletal and the structure sticks to a generic "VH1 Behind the Music" model, but glance around the newly rechristened August Wilson Theater during the songs in "Jersey Boys" at the middle-age women dancing in their seats while their husbands' heads bop to the music and it's clear something is connecting. Then go dive in among the leopard-print outfits and thick "Sopranos" accents in the lobby at intermission and it becomes even clearer. If this musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons can reach its core audience of baby boomers and partisan home-staters, it could become a sizable hit."
USA Today - Recommended
"...In following its working-class heroes as they climb the ladder up to fortune and fame, Boys offers a familiar blend of self-conscious populism and knee-jerk sentimentality. Luckily, co-librettists Rick Elice and veteran film and TV writer Marshall Brickman — whose previous collaborators include Woody Allen, Johnny Carson and Dick Cavett — manage to mitigate the muck with flashes of easygoing wit. Director Des McAnuff, who cut his rock 'n' roll teeth overseeing the Broadway debut of The Who's Tommy, also helps keep the proceedings brisk and breezy. Scenic designer Klara Zieglerova fashions a whimsical tone, with campy period cartoons projected on screens."
New York Post - Highly Recommended
"...It's a Broadway commonplace that the most important thing about a musical is the book - but no one goes out singing the book, so it's a commonplace often forgotten. Then comes a show like "Jersey Boys," with a book, by Broadway newcomers Marshall Brickman (Woody Allen's one-time co-writer) and Rick Elice, that's as tight and absorbing as an Arthur Miller play, whipped up by director Des McAnuff into a controlled rock frenzy. That's when you realize just what a book can do. A glitzy, sleight-of-hand staging never hurt, either."
Newsday - Recommended
"...Why does "Jersey Boys" succeed - and it does, exuberantly - when most jukebox musicals have been a pain in the Broadway butt? For starters, the creators of the show about Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons don't just love this blue-collar DNA-pop music from the '60s. Authors Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, director Des McAnuff and choreographer Sergio Trujillo obviously also understand why they love these dopey romantic lyrics with the simple song structures, the gorgeous harmonic blends and the immaculate yet easygoing doo-wop beat."
Wall Street Journal - Not Recommended
"...Yet another jukebox musical has come to town, and this time I don't feel like arguing—much. For reasons not obvious to me, "Jersey Boys: The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons" is not only giving pleasure to paying theatergoers (that part I get) but has also passed muster with certain critics who should know better. Contrary to anything you've read elsewhere, it's nothing more than 32 songs performed on a cheap-looking set by a high-priced lounge band, strung together like dimestore pearls on the most vapid of all-tell-no-show books."
Washington Post - Recommended
"Jersey Boys wears its jukebox-musical credentials without apology, and it really rocks. The energy is unstoppable, particularly from the four lead performers. The physical production is impressive with pop-art projections. Jersey Boys shows there still is theatrical life in mining pop hits from the past."
Time Out New York - Highly Recommended
"....With Jersey Boys, the Broadway musical has finally done right by the jukebox, presenting the Four Seasons' infectiously energetic 1960s tunes as they were intended to be performed. True, the script adheres closely to the dramatic beats of a VH1 biopic: building bridges in the first act, delving into tunnels in the second. But under Des McAnuff's sleek direction, the result feels canny instead of canned. And Bob Gaudio's music, as sung by a dynamic cast and shaped by Steve Canyon Kennedy's exemplary audio design, sounds as good as it ever did (and sometimes—blasphemy!—even better)."
NY Magazine - Recommended
"...Not to take anything away from the actual, you know, band, but the show's charm is primarily Des McAnuff's doing. The director has no illusions about what drives this sort of show. Jersey Boys may aim only to be a shallow, big-budget, crowd-pleasing jukebox musical, but it's a model of the genre. Admire first the deftness of the storytelling by librettists Marshall Brickman (who co-wrote Annie Hall) and Rick Elice. From the hardscrabble early scenes, which mostly involve band members- rotating in and out of jail ('the Rahway Academy of the Arts,' as the scholar-in-residence DeVito puts it), the script uses a Scorsese trick to race the action along: The boys' narration propels the story by layering exposition right over the songs. Sugar and medicine are calibrated so finely that, almost before you realize it, the boys have traded their horrible clashing pink shirts for the true badge of early-sixties pop success, matching maroon blazers. Buongiorno, groupies."
Village Voice - Somewhat Recommended
"...Is my cultural autobiography so fascinating? No, but frankly, neither is Frankie Valli's. At least as assembled by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, the tale of how the Four Seasons came together, sold a lot of records, and subsequently fell apart because Bob Gaudio wanted to stay home and write songs, while Tommy DeVito racked up nasty gambling debts with the Mob, is no big deal—just another biopic immortalizing a minor celeb's quick rise and a bumpy fall, only in flesh-and-blood 3-D."
Broadway.com - Highly Recommended
"...Watch your back, Mamma Mia! A new jukebox musical has arrived on Broadway, and it's as much of a crowd-pleaser as you are. It's also a lot smarter, and it actually tells the story of the group whose music it celebrates--the Four Seasons. Slickly directed by Des McAnuff, Jersey Boys stars a bunch of talented unknowns who are making the most of their big break. They, and the show, are a knockout."
Newark Star-Ledger - Recommended
"....Not a jukebox musical stuffed with golden oldies so much as a compelling bio-musical, "Jersey Boys" gets plenty of mileage from can't-get-em-outta-your-head classics like "Big Girls Don't Cry" while legitimately employing the music for dramatic purposes. Fluently scripted by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, this classic rags-to-riches story is narrated in turn by each member of the 4 Seasons, beginning with Belleville wise guy Tommy DeVito, who organized the group between his visits to the slammer in the late 1950s. Energetically weaving story, songs, visuals and exciting performances into a can't-stop-the-music tidal wave, director Des McAnuff stages a compelling rush of events that pauses only occasionally to savor the beauty of certain songs. Live video is spliced with vintage film of '60s crowds reacting to the band or pop art-style cartoons that comment upon various moments."
The Journal News - Recommended
"...The songs - and you may be amazed to realize how many hits there were, from the early '60s on - are all flawlessly delivered, without sounding canned. The book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice is a little long on narration, and you may find your eyes glazing over until the point, two-thirds of the way through the first act, when the boys break into television with an appearance on "American Bandstand." From that point on, though, you snap awake and happily ride the wave."
New Yorker - Recommended
"....This is direct, pedal-to-the-metal stuff, without nuance, irony, or wit-the sound, as the show insists, of the working people. Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice have written a clever book, which should become the template for this kind of musical excavation; it sets up the songs with well-judged humor and the elegant strokes of observation that the Four Seasons repertoire lacks. At one point, during Valli's first date with Mary (Jennifer Naimo), the baleboste who becomes his first wife, she asks why he spells his invented Italian surname with a 'y' and not an 'i.' - 'Y' is such a bullshit letter,' she says. 'It doesn?t know what it is. Is it a vowel' Is it a consonant?' 'Jersey Boys' knows exactly what it is: a money tree. The audience is tickled to death, but, given enough of these ersatz events, Broadway musical theatre may be, too."
CurtainUp - Highly Recommended
"This authentic jukebox musical doesn't compromise or insult your intelligence; its engrossing, carefully constructed plot with sharp dialogue is actually given heft by the interruptions of hit tunes."
Talkin Broadway - Somewhat Recommended
"Jersey Boys is an energizing experience, and a welcome one in a year that's been illuminated by too few outstanding Broadway musicals. And it's all happening at a jukebox show. If it's a shame that there are any at all on Broadway, the best we can hope for from now on is that as many possible will provide the same kind of fun and thrills that Jersey Boys so effortlessly exudes."
Cititour.com - Recommended
"What distinguishes it from other, less fully realized jukebox musicals is that it has not only charm but also characters and a story with some depth...Although at times the first act progresses at a dizzying pace, and some jokes are more likely to elicit groans than chuckles, director Des McAnuff minimizes these flaws by letting the music and his youthful cast take charge…This spirited show has an engaging balance of street smarts and showmanship savvy."
TheaterMania - Somewhat Recommended
"Yeah, sure. Go see Jersey Boys, subtitled "The Story of Frankie Valli & The Four Seasons." So what if the production is so slick that you could slip on it and slide to an untimely end? Fuhgeddaboudit! It's got the Four Seasons songs, an astonishing string of melodic and melodramatic celebrations of adolescent emotion that make this show a highly appealing oldies concert."
Theatre Is Easy - Recommended
"I've simply never before seen an audience so intensely connected with what was happening on stage...It's a musical with very little dialogue, performed by what is essentially a really great Four Seasons cover band...It was as if my fellow audience members were connected to the stage by a rope that was pulling them closer and closer until their happiness became audible, until they were literally singing along. I could see the flashbacks behind their eyes."
Epoch Times - Recommended
"Jersey Boys is fun, a bit educational, and offers a very good time, with one major caveat. If you were not big on the music of The Four Seasons originally, chances are this may not be something for you. But if you did enjoy hearing them on the radio, or seeing them in person, this is definitely one show to check out."
NY Theatre Guide - Highly Recommended
"Sometimes a commercial artistic impulse and demography seem to merge in a way that guarantees success. I think we'll be seeing an example of this phenomenon when the new musical Jersey Boys, about the lives and career of the pre-boomer pop group The Four Seasons, becomes the smash hit it deserves to be."
To You - Highly Recommended
"It?s a fabulous show even if one is not familiar with the songs. The evening that I experienced Jersey Boys it was obvious that the audience consisted totally of Four Season fans and New Jersey residents. I highly suggest that you purchase the CD as you?ll have the opportunity to not only recall the great music, but some of the dialogue is injected as well."
lohud.com - Recommended
"The songs are all flawlessly delivered, without sounding canned. The scenic elements are first-rate. You may emerge a little fuzzy about the family narratives that unfold in this 40-year-story of a singing group. But no matter, it's the music that counts, and it's sheer joy."
Reuters - Highly Recommended
"Jersey Boys features 33 songs, nearly all of them guaranteed to have you dancing in your seat. A first-rate piece of Americana as well as a backstage musical that shines with intelligence and wit.The stage is alive at all times."
San Diego Union-Tribune - Highly Recommended
"The Broadway season so far has proved unpredictable, with just one bona fide (and artistically deserving) hit opening since August, the La Jolla Playhouse-spawned "Jersey Boys" ... The burnished show evokes its late 1950s/early 1960s ambience so authentically (the clothes, the haircuts, the attitudes), it now goes beyond nostalgia to something like resurrection."
Broadway World - Recommended
"....Now we have Jersey Boys; an exceedingly fun and electrifyingly staged tale of the rise and fall of The Four Seasons, which smartly uses their hit songs as a sort of background soundtrack to the story of a group of blue-collar guys establishing a distinctive sound during the early years of rock and roll. They sing songs on stages, in clubs, and in recording studios, but, aside from a couple of missteps, never as part of a book scene. And yet director Des McAnuff, by being very stingy with applause breaks until the audience is ready to burst, and bookwriters Marshall Brickman & Rick Elice, by deftly weaving the dialogue in and out of the music, have found a method to use songs to fuel the story without overwhelming it. Fans of The Four Seasons may walk in excited to hear familiar favorites like "Sherry", "Big Girls Don't Cry", "Rag Doll" and "Walk Like a Man", but they should leave the theatre impressed with how plot-driven the entire production is without ever short-handing the music. The jukebox musical has found its Pal Joey; a bit flawed, but ambitious, gritty, clever and professional."
