Chicago: Like Vegas, but cold!

We received an announcement this morning that we've been expecting (and I've been dreading) for some time. Broadway in Chicago says that the current, nominally "touring" production of Jersey Boys, the Broadway musical about Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons that's been in residence at the LaSalle Bank Theatre since October, will be staying there indefinitely. Looks like there's a new "Big Man in Town."

My cubemate Christopher Piatt reviewed Jersey Boys favorably last fall, but I've made no secret of my distaste for the show. As a concert, it's terrific; the musical direction and the well-matched cast make the Seasons' music sound exciting and authentic. As a piece of musical theater, though, it's crap. The book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice is some of the laziest, most clichéd storytelling I've seen in a Broadway musical, one in which the music biz is repeatedly referred to as both a "merry-go-round" and a "rollercoaster." Brickman and Elice brandish cultural stereotypes that were already tired when Ed Sullivan was using them; here, they're used as building blocks for the characters. But to a raving baby boomer audience, that's trumped by the mistaken sensation of witnessing an American Bandstand taping.

But the merits of the show aren't the real story here. Two of the most prominent theaters in the Loop - the LaSalle Bank and the Oriental, home of Wicked - will now be occupied for the foreseeable future by mediocre Xeroxes of mediocre New York products, further cementing Chicago's status as Broadway Midwest, a regional outpost for tourist theater. Like Las Vegas, where a theater is being built for Jersey Boys at the Palazzo hotel, Chicago is being turned into a franchise town for New York producers, with more McMusicals putting down stakes. 

I'm not sure if the CTA has decided on a designation for the new Block 37 transit hub, but before they have any signs printed up allow me to make a suggestion. I can hear the announcer now: "This is Times Square West."