Thursday, April 5, 2012

The Other Jersey Boys May Be Headed to Broadway

by Pa Rock
Theatre Aficionado


When my friend Carla and I did five Broadway shows during seven nights in the Big Apple back in January of 2009, the show that was the most fun, for me at least, was Jersey Boys, the story of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons.   The people in the audience, especially the old farts, knew the words to every song, and it took monumental restraint not to bust out singing!

A year or so later I was with my sister, Gail, in Las Vegas, and we assigned her son, Reed Smith, the task of getting us show tickets.  Reed got us seats for the Las Vegas production of Jersey Boys, and it turned out to even be better than the Broadway version.  The show was a combination of a great story and some really outstanding music from the sixties - in fact, lots and lots of wonderful music from the sixties.

Today I read that another group of Jersey boys will most likely be heading to Broadway in 2014.  This group probably won't bring along much music, but damn will they be funny!

The boys are Dante and Randal who run a convenience store and a video rental place, and Jay and Silent Bob who stand out front of the establishment selling drugs and talking trash to people entering and leaving the two businesses.  Well, actually it is only Jay who does the trash-talking because Silent Bob is, after all, silent.

That was the gang from Clerks, a really great movie filmed on a very tight budget back in 1994.  Twelve years later in 2006, they made the sequel, Clerks II, which featured the same foursome operating in and around a fast food joint.  Both movies would fail to pass the Evangelical sniff test - what with a young lady having sex with a dead man in a dark restroom in the original movie, and a bestiality segment in the second.

But grossness aside, they are truly funny films.

Today I read that the writer and director of the Clerks movies, Kevin Smith, now says that he is thinking about taking the concept to Broadway with a stage version of a yet-to-be-written Clerks III.  Smith, who also portrayed Silent Bob in the movies, has the brains and ingenuity to make the transition from film to a stage production - and I am betting that his Broadway show will be every bit as funny as the movies.

I have been looking for a good excuse to get back to Gotham, and Clerks III on Broadway more than fills the bill.   It will be fun seeing those boys from Jersey on the Great White Way!

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