Of course, the musical is not just the tale of the working-out and the ultimate dispelling of a family curse. It is also a poignant account of a woman relating to a treasured younger brother and an even more treasured son in light of the early loss of the brother.
A jukebox musical, whatever its dramatic blueprint, is first and foremost a delivery vehicle for nostalgia. This is a popular thing and to a great extent a good one. It is no easy trick, though. Almost every song tells some sort of story. The stories in most songs, even the simplest ones, imply surprisingly extensive contexts, and taken together, these contexts tangle rapidly. There exist only a few possible fundamental ways to minimize those tangles.
The tale of a marriage from first kiss to the moment of separation, it leaves essentially unidentified the problems that cause the separation. What we see are more in the way of symptoms. Catherine is uncomfortable with her writer husband’s celebrity; she opts out of attending parties with him; their careers make them spend a lot of time in different cities; he has an affair. These are common kinds of incidents in breakups, but they do not explain the breakups; they do not explain how a couple who were originally propelled into each other’s arms by passion come to be so awkward and distant with each other. That part of the story is told in ill-connected snapshots.
This is a frontal attack on the Mormon faith structure, accomplished mainly by harping on things about it that seem ridiculous. And when the missionaries, the vectors of this rendered-ridiculous faith, are set loose in a country where their earnest but clueless activities endanger the population (putting villagers at risk of being shot in the head or subjected to female circumcision), I’m sorry, it’s about as affectionate as Christopher Durang’s takedowns of Catholicism.
Something happened involving those two and Mrs. K’s deceased husband. We may think we know, but I suspect most guesses will be wrong. We know the play is going in a dark direction, but we may well not guess how dark.
Jersey Boys is probably the preeminent jukebox musical, beautifully presented. And if you can’t visit the New York mother ship, this will do nicely.
I lived in London and Vienna before coming to the United States, and grew up mainly in Ann Arbor. I was writing plays and stories as early as grade school. My undergraduate years at the University of Pennsylvania, where I first reviewed theater, for the college paper, were succeeded by graduate study at the Johns Hopkins University, where I earned a doctorate in English Literature.
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