The busy annual season of New Zealand’s second-oldest theatrical production outfit has begun with the Napier Operatic Society’s nine-show season of Broadway hit Jersey Boys.
As is often the case with the 137-year-old society’s big nights out at the Napier Municipal Theatre, they’re looking for a sell-out of close to 9000 seats.
The show started last night, and is on again Saturday and Sunday.
It then runs Tuesday to Sunday until October 12 when there are two shows on the last day. Sundays feature 2pm matinees.
The reality of reliving the lives and times of 1960s and 1970s American hits sensation Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons came home with the dress rehearsal, with a standing ovation from about 150 guests on Wednesday night.
There are almost 100 people involved, including what stage manager Marc Collier said was a smallish cast of 16, and they are mostly volunteers, doing it for the love of it and carrying on with day jobs during the week.
Despite volunteers, such productions frequently cost more than $250,000 due to costs dominated by fees for rights to stage the production, venue hire, transport and building of stage props, ticketing and promotion.
“We don’t make any money out of doing these shows,” Collier said.
“It’s the passion, and about the honour of putting it on. They do it like professionals, but they’re all volunteers.”
Wages were limited to those of Nelson-born professional actor Kristian Lavercombe, who plays Valli from teen superstar to veteran adult performer, and who is internationally known for 2700 shows as Riff Raff in The Rocky Horror Show, Collier said.
Lavercombe played Valli in Christchurch’s Court Theatre sell-out season of Jersey Boys spanning more than two months in the summer of 2020-2021.
Playing the other three founding members are the essentially-local Dan Ball (Tommy De Vito, lead guitar and baritone vocals), Tyler Purdy (Bob Guadio, keyboards and tenor vocals) and Sean Boston (Nick Massi, bass guitar and bass vocals).
The band is a collection of local musicians, who are compensated because they are professionals in the game, and have had to work rehearsals and the show season around other gigs.
The second night – Saturday – marks the 20th anniversary of the October 5, 2004 world premiere of Jersey Boys at the University of California’s La Jolla Playhouse in San Diego.
It is categorised as a documentary-style jukebox musical dramatising the formation, success and breakup of the rock ‘n’ roll group that became famous for dozens of hits, including Ain’t That A Shame, Sherry, Big Girls Don’t Cry, Rag Doll and Silence is Golden.
The society has staged productions of most of the world’s major stage shows, many of which have, like Jersey Boys, been hits on Broadway in New York and been adapted from, or become, successful movies.
Collier, the fourth generation of his family in the Tabard Theatre-based society, has been tied up with the annual shows as long as he can remember.
With his day job as theatre assets manager, he effectively has a week of 8am-midnight shifts. He was confident the usually well-supporting Napier audience would grow because of the familiarity of the music.
He said the role of Valli took a special voice, but it was more than that. Lavercombe, who has no understudy, is on stage almost throughout the close to two-and-a-half hours of the show, through at least six costume changes.
“All their songs are so well-known, even something I’ve learned, songs that I didn’t know were theirs,” he said.
“Kristian is a professional, and when it’s over I think he’s off overseas to something else.
“One of the things I really get out of this is seeing the people afterwards out in the foyer, seeing the smiles and knowing they’ve enjoyed a good, local production. We have a lot of talent and very good musicians in Hawke’s Bay.”
Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 51 years of journalism experience, 40 of them in Hawke’s Bay, in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.