The latest tribute musical to use a pop group's back catalogue instead of an original score deals with Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons, the New Jersey band who, in their 1960s prime, rivalled the Beatles. The songs are terrific, and Des McAnuff's direction is slick, but Klara Zieglerova's boring set is yet another chicken wire and scaffolding affair.
That Ryan Molloy, who plays Valli, is completely charmless has more to do with the character than the player since it was Frankie's voice, with its amazing falsetto, which made him a star, not his looks or his likeableness. On this evidence he is about as appealing as Tony Soprano's psychotic nephew. Valli, who has appeared in The Sopranos, would have probably ended up in the Mob, or as a hairdresser (he says), had showbusiness not claimed him. Only Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama graduate Stephen Ashfield as lanky Bob Gaudio, composer of most of their hits, has charm, although Philip Bullock makes something of the Ringo of the group, Nick Massi. So, too, does Glenn Carter of the thuggish Tommy DeVito, whose slipshod ways with a fast buck led to his losing the band he created.
Not a patch on Buddy, the best of the back catalogue biopic musicals, let alone Mamma Mia!. It is still hugely enjoyable, even if things do not catch fire until a good half hour in, with the first of their hits, Sherry, followed by Big Girls Don't Cry. By the time Can't Take My Eyes Off You is reached in act two the joint is jumping.
Their story (the usual rags-to-riches, drink, broads, trouble with the Mob and relative obscurity journey) is told at times by a different "season" - a clever twist, but Kurosawa's Rashomon it is not.
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