the jersey boys

Sunday, September 16, 2007By Randy Mink
Press News Service

CHICAGO -- Two blockbuster Broadway musicals opening in October highlight downtown Chicago's fall theater bill. Tip: Get your tickets now.

The most-anticipated event of the season is "Jersey Boys," the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The winner of four 2006 Tony Awards, including Best Musical, tells how a group of blue-collar, Italian-American boys from the wrong side of the tracks became one of the 1960s biggest pop music sensations. They wrote their songs, invented their own sounds and sold 175 million records before they were 30.

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Playing at the LaSalle Bank Theatre from Oct. 6 through at least April 13, "Jersey Boys" features such hit songs as "Sherry," "Big Girls Don't Cry," "Working My Way Back to You" and "Can't Take My Eyes Off You."

The show has added 14 weeks to its original engagement and likely will make further extensions. Many dates are sold out.

Andrew Lloyd Webber's "The Phantom of the Opera," the longest-running Broadway show, returns Oct. 31 and runs through the holidays at the Cadillac Palace Theatre. In January, "Phantom" celebrated its 19th anniversary on Broadway.

Based on the classic novel "Le Fantome de l'Opera" by Gaston Leroux, the recipient of seven 1988 Tony Awards is about a masked figure who lurks in the catacombs of the Paris Opera House, exercising a reign of terror over all who inhabit it. He falls in love with a young soprano, Christine, and devotes himself to nurturing her talents, employing all the devious methods at his command.

Another musical

The off-Broadway musical comedy "Altar Boyz" returns Oct. 7 for a seven-week engagement. The production at the Drury Lane Water Tower Place is a story about five small-town boys -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, Juan and Abraham -- trying to save the world -- one screaming fan at a time.

Presented as a concert in real time, "Altar Boyz" satirizes the phenomenon of boy bands, the popularity of Christian-themed music and excess product placement in contemporary American culture. The group's amusingly pious pop act features slick dance moves, heavenly harmonies and lyrics such as "Girl You Make Me Wanna Wait" and "Jesus Called Me on My Cell Phone."