Did Critics Welcome Frankie Valli and Jersey Boys to Broadway?

Jersey Boys, a bio-musical that tells the story and uses the song catalog of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, has hit Broadway after a successful tryout at the La Jolla Playhouse. The tuner opened at the newly renamed August Wilson Theatre on November 6. Could critics take their eyes off it?

Here is a sampling of what they had to say:

William Stevenson in his Broadway.com Review: "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."

Ben Brantley of The New York Times: "In a year in which one pop-songbook show after another has thudded and died, Jersey Boys passes as silver instead of as the chrome-plated jukebox that it is. Unlike the recent Broadway flops Good Vibrations the Beach Boys show, All Shook Up the Elvis show and Lennon you figure it out, Jersey Boys 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. Mr. Brickman... and Mr. 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. Mr. McAnuff, who won a Tony for repackaging rock for Broadway in The Who's Tommy in 1993, lends clarity and crispness to a shifting narrative that lets the different Seasons tell their own sides of their story... But while Jersey Boys is based on fact, it rarely leaps over the clichés of a regulation grit-to-glamour blueprint... But once the Four Seasons classics are rolled out, every other pair of shoulders in the house starts a-twitchin'."

The New York Post: "It's terrific—with a young John Lloyd Young singing the bleating, stratospheric doo-wop of the hard-driving Frankie Valli in a way that rivals Frankie Valli. But that's not even the best part. 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... The story, and more especially the treatment, lends itself to the telling and the staging, which seamlessly combines the flashy elements of rock concerts with the straightforward narrative."

Howard Kissel of The New York Daily News: "I had a great time at Jersey Boys... Although a few scenes are dramatized, much of the time the characters speak directly to the audience. 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. The most impressive of the group is Christian Hoff as Tommy DeVito, who started it all."

David Rooney of Variety: "OK, 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... Jersey Boys is unlikely to erase the critical and industry skepticism toward the compilation genre or to send backers scurrying to invest in the inevitable Lucky Star: The Madonna Story. But this agreeably modest show has a number of appealing factors on its side. The underdog story of four blue-collar Italian boys from Jersey who become a chart-topping hit factory advocates all the right embraceable values for mainstream acceptance... It celebrates the rise to stardom while providing down-to-earth, bittersweet acknowledgement of its casualties. But most of all, it showcases an energizing concert of toe-tapping pop classics."

Michael Kuchwara of The Associated Press: "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. Young does more than impersonate Valli. He lives, breathes and sings the man. It's one of those eerie, exact performances, complete with high, almost piercing voice, that crystallizes why Valli was such a unique entertainer. 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."

Elysa Gardner of USA Today: "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. But Boys ' real secret weapon is its stars. John Lloyd Young's sweetly guileless Valli does indeed sing like an angel, as another character notes. And he and the actors cast as his bandmates perform the Four Seasons' hits with more prowess and charisma than I've yet seen in a faux-rock musical."

Linda Winer of Newsday: "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... We always have Frankie, embodied by John Lloyd Young with unpretentious street-corner swagger and just the right nice-guy ambitions. Young also happens to have a voice that can be buzzy and rough in the middle registers and fly with the beat of pubescent hearts in falsetto. Sure, this is clone theater, note-by-note coverage of songs that combine soapy, commercial sounds with the deep-leaning pulse of a pre-counter-cultural parallel universe in which pop groups wore suits and skinny ties and nobody discussed Vietnam. McAnuff keeps the show from feeling animatronic. Things are pleasantly underproduced... There are a few lines—about flyovers and day jobs—that sound too contemporary. Otherwise, Brickman... makes us believe the guys are speaking for themselves. And Trujillo's choreography finds the joy in unisons of pumping elbows and snapping fingers-best of all, without a wink of parody."