January 5, 2015
Montreal GazetteJanuary 2, 2015
By Pat Donnelly
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Back in 2004, long before he became artistic director of the Stratford Festival, Des McAnuff directed the first production of a musical called Jersey Boys at La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego. A decade after that première, his four years of leading the Stratford Festival (2008-2012) are history, and he’s back in the musical theatre business south of the border.
McAnuff, who owns two Tony Awards (for Big River and The Who’s Tommy), is now working on a production of a musical based on Boris Pasternak’s novel Doctor Zhivago, slated to open on Broadway this spring.
Yet he’s still being called upon to talk about Jersey Boys, now in its 10th year on Broadway, with two productions running in the U.K., one in Las Vegas, plus the North American touring production soon to appear here.
“I don’t get tired of it at all,” McAnuff insisted, speaking from his new home in Connecticut, just down the road from his friend and frequent theatre collaborator Christopher Plummer. “I do not take this for granted.”
Jersey Boys, which arrives in Montreal for the first time on Tuesday, is a gift that keeps on giving, for which McAnuff is grateful. Following the example of Harold Prince, who keeps a close eye on every production of The Phantom of the Opera, he watches over his biggest hit. “There isn’t an actor in Jersey Boys that we haven’t auditioned,” he said. “It’s important to stay on it.” He checked out the touring production that’s coming here during its San Diego run, in October.
This is Montreal’s winter of boy-band musicals. After Jersey Boys comes Forever Plaid, opening at the Segal Centre on Feb. 1.
What they have in common — besides being jukebox musicals featuring all-male quartets — is pop-music nostalgia for boomers. Also, they’ve both been made into movies.
Forever Plaid is smaller in scale (four actors), and more of an off-Broadway revue. Jersey Boys, with its cast of 19, is a full-blown Broadway musical.
Chronologically, Forever Plaid should be seen first, as it mines hits of the ’50s (such as Moments to Remember).
Jersey Boys focuses on the music and story of one particular group: the Four Seasons, who peaked in the 1960s (with songs like Sherry and Big Girls Don’t Cry).
It’s the new kid on the block compared to Forever Plaid, which was launched in 1990. Both, however, are still on the road.
Jersey Boys tells a rags-to-riches story that follows the life cycle of the Four Seasons as a group, from four points of view. Each member of the band gets to spin the narrative his way, as they work through their hit songs.
McAnuff portrays the musical’s book writers, Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, as the true heroes of the show.
“The music is very strong in Jersey Boys, of course,” he said. “We have all these good songs. But I think the real strength of the evening is the story. And we owe everything to the writers for that.”
It was one of the original members of the Four Seasons, Bob Gaudio, who got the ball rolling in 2000. He hired Brickman and Elice. Then he added McAnuff, artistic director of La Jolla Playhouse at the time, to the team. Brickman was the one who realized that the true story of the band — four tough, blue-collar delinquents who cleaned up their image in order to make the Top 10 — surpassed any fiction they could imagine.
At first, McAnuff, a longtime Four Seasons fan, wasn’t convinced the project would work, “for a variety of reasons.” For one thing, there was just so much story to tell.
“But I met with the writers,” he recalled, “and I guess we kind of duked it out. We came up with an outline and a song order. And they did a full treatment. I was so impressed with the treatment that I put it into full production without a workshop, without a script.”
McAnuff began planning the show with designer Klara Zieglerova. By June 2004, the script, which made use of McAnuff’s suggestion to tell the story of the Four Seasons within the framework of four seasons, was finished. Rehearsals began in August for the October opening.
“It was an eccentric approach,” McAnuff said, “but in this case, it was efficient. I was able to do some storytelling visually. This created a kind of shorthand for the writers, and they were able to do the wonderful work that they did.”
Doctor Zhivago takes up most of McAnuff’s time these days. He assembled an all-star creative team, including composer Lucy Simon (The Secret Garden), who wrote the original score.
Will it include Lara’s Theme? “We use it, but not in an obvious way,” he said. “Surreptitious but memorable.”
McAnuff said the Stratford Festival remains close to his heart. But he doesn’t miss the job of running it, which he compares to keeping up with a giant treadmill.
Still, “I’m thrilled to have been there,” he said. “It’s one of the great accomplishments of my life.”