Four men meet at an Italian restaurant on 46th Street. That’s not the setup to a joke; it’s the origin of the 2006 Tony Award-winning Best Musical “Jersey Boys.” More than two decades ago, writers Rick Elice and the late Marshall Brickman chatted with Four Season superstars Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli to explore the idea of creating a musical with the songs of their hit-making band.
Before the quartet even sat down, the conversation flowed. Brickman and Elice asked, “What was it like being you?” Elice recalled. “Before we were done with lunch, we found ourselves leaning forward the way you do when you’re hearing a good story.”
The pair believed there was a compelling piece of theater in Gaudio and Valli’s tales — a bio-musical that would tell the story of the Four Seasons using their charttoppers like “Sherry,” “Oh What a Night” and “Walk Like a Man.” Gaudio and Valli were nervous about a musical feeling too cartoonish. But Brickman and Elice wrote a few pages, and Gaudio and Valli liked them. So the musical-writing duo consulted the Dodgers, a theatrical production company founded by six artists and friends and headed by Michael David, the person who suggested a Four Seasons musical in the first place. David advised the team to attach a director. Brickman and Elice approached Des McAnuff, one of the founding Dodgers and a director who had won a Tony for helming “The Who’s Tommy.”
“I don’t think I got it at first,” McAnuff conceded. He wasn’t initially convinced a Four Seasons musical was artistically sound. “The original take on it was, perhaps, a more traditional musical. And I leaned toward doing it more as a real rock-and-roll, blue-collar show. But we got together, and then we got together again. And a third time. And we all started seeing the same piece.”
