Video: JERSEY BOYS Comes Home to New Jersey

Why don't you come on

Put your attention on. I look so fine. Come on. Move it nice and easy

Girl, you'll make me lose my time. Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World

Up next at the famed Paper Mill Playhouse is a new reimagined production

of the Tony Award-winning musical, Jersey Boys. Performances begin on October 2nd

and we drop by the rehearsal room to bring you a sneak peek and to meet the company

We've been kind of in the Jersey for a really long time. And to approach it from a totally new lens reimagined

is, I think, a really thrilling opportunity for both of us. Yeah, it's incredibly exciting

to bring Jersey Boys home to New Jersey at Paper Mill Playhouse. and we're doing the first production ever to originate in New Jersey

So I'm really excited to share it with audiences. My goal has always been to bring a new group of people to the show

so that they can fall in love with Jersey Boys the way we all love Jersey Boys

And I think we returning to the script The words that Rick Ellis and Marshall Brickman have put on paper are so spectacular And we starting with those and building from the ground up

Yeah, I mean, basically what Michael's saying, I think having a team of people that are so brand new and fresh to the project automatically brings, it breathes new light into the piece

And really, you know, much like Michael said, just saying the words on the page is plenty

It's enough. It's a masterful piece of theater as it is. So just allowing the room to kind of trust that process

It's a dream come true. I mean, as an Italian American, I feel like it's part of my destiny to play Frankie Valley

I mean, when I told my family, they freaked out. They are so excited. They are bringing bust loads of people

I'm just so excited to get to like tell this story and step into his shoes and just hopefully do it justice

I think what I love about him is that to him, the big sentiment of the show is family is everything, right

And growing up Italian, growing up very close to the city, I'm from Long Island, he's from New Jersey

There's pretty similar things, but also many people would say it's different. I think that's what I'm so excited about is finding the similarities between us, but also what's different about us and then trying to marry it together

You know I come from like I said an Italian family and we are so close in it borderline sometimes overbearing but I would never change it And I think Frankie life is similar so I think that really awesome to be able to like

marry that together. And aside from that, just getting to sing this music, I mean, like, I'm a tenor

but, like, I'm really, really getting my range with all those high notes

and, you know, hooking into that falsetto placement. It's really, really been an awesome discovery for myself, yeah

We've been shot out of a canon. I mean, we have three weeks to do. these rehearsals. Michael, the director, calls it like a play with music. So there's a ton of scene

work, a ton of monologues. And yeah, it just feels like, you know, we all come to work

we're ready to work, and it's moving fast. We hop on the train and, like, we can't get off

It's good. I'm so excited. I truly have a deep love and respect for the material. And it just

feels so right that we're about to tell this story at a theater that's literally 15 miles

from where it starts. It just feels, everything feels right. How well did you know the show before you got into it

I had seen it on Broadway, and I also had a chance to see it off Broadway, so I'd seen it a few times, seen some friends

give some beautiful performances in it. But I'd never really been inside the show until this past month

I'm overwhelmed with joy. Every time I just hear the music from Jersey Boys it just is so nostalgic for me And I been such a fan of the show for many many years and to be able to do it at Paper Mill for the first time

is so rewarding, so rewarding. Yeah, I grew up listening to Duop music

My family loved Duop music, so I was always in love with the genre. Then I fell in love with the show when I saw it on Broadway

almost 20 years ago. And I was like, maybe one day I'll be in Jersey Boys

and that time has come. It's really exciting. So this is the first production of Jersey Boys

going to New Jersey that wasn't a tour. That must be incredible

It's incredible. It's a responsibility, I think, especially to our wonderful Paper Mill Playhouse folks

It's a homegrown New Jersey production, right? And I think coming in as an actor

and as a creative team, we had a lot of conversations about, you know, what this show means to the state of New Jersey

what it means to Broadway folks, you know, Italian-Americans, you know, a lot of groups

It's a responsibility, but it's a blast and an honor, and it kind of lights a fight

under you to do well on the show