By Marc Shulgold

Return with us now to those thrilling days of yesteryear! Trivia quiz: What ’50s TV show opened with that line? Yes! Hi-O Silver! But more than a memory of “The Lone Ranger,” those words invite us to explore our fond yearnings of years gone by, our youth. Oh, let’s just say it: Let’s get nostalgic.

That’s why you’ve come here, waiting for the lights to dim – waiting to travel to a world that isn’t real anymore (or maybe never was?). These days the theater doesn’t always take us there. The curtain sometime rises on scenes of life that’s going on out there right now. Not always pretty. But when the show is about days gone by, in the ’40s, ’50s, ’60s – or the ’80s and ’90s… When we settle into stories about those simpler times, those happy days – we’ll leave out the Sharks and Jets. When we hear those people sing and watch them dance, something comes over us.

Nostalgia. Comfort and joy. Funny thing about that word, nostalgia. It’s from the Greek: nostos – returning home, and algos – pain. Really? Pain?

Just glance at the season of Broadway musicals in theaters across the country, many of them revivals. They are like returning home. But there’s no pain in watching. These are guilt-free trips down memory lane. They’re great theater. But here is where the craft of creating theatrical nostalgia comes in. And where hard work, commitment, courage, frustration and, yes, maybe some pain, enters the picture.

Many consider MAMMA MIA! the greatest feel-good show ever. The songs of ABBA dominated the airwaves in the ’70s (right on the heels of the Beatles), selling millions of records. But their cheery harmonies and lavish get-ups received the cold shoulder from true rock fans. The Swedish hit-makers disbanded in 1982, though some Greatest Hits releases kept them relevant in the ’90s. Early that decade, an English producer named Judy Craymer fell in love with their records (to the dismay of her neighbors), and she started bugging ABBA’s Benny and Björn about her idea for a musical, stressing this would be a story, not a tribute. It took quite a while to get the go-ahead.

Next task, seeking out someone to write the book. Craymer found and convinced Catherine Johnson – another English woman. The trio was completed when Phyllida Lloyd, a director steeped in legitimate theater and opera, agreed to come aboard. Three women, all English, all sharing the same birth year, incidentally. A final key signing was choreographer Anthony Van Laast, the token male. That was relatively easy compared to finding a theater, a cast and a crew with an April 1999 opening fast-approaching. Björn remained skeptical. He was wrong. One opening-night London critic wrote, MAMMA MIA! could put Prozac out of business.” Mind-boggling international theatrical successes awaited. And did we mention the two movie versions?

Behind every comforting, smile-inducing Broadway show you’ll find months, if not years, of painfully stressful preparation. Consider Jersey Boys. This could have been another pleasant “jukebox musical” – one Four Seasons hit after another. That would have been OK with me. Hey, I was in high school in 1965 and went to my senior prom with a girl named Sherry. Perfect! For me, all I needed was a show with those great songs. But no, not the way Ron Nelson and the others on the team envisioned things. They were going to build an evening with a story – with grit.

“This was back in 2004,” recalled Nelson, Jersey Boys’ music director. “The show didn’t exist then. We were in La Jolla (California). Thankfully, we were gifted a beautiful book. The arc of the evening would involve using the music in a truly beautiful way – like the songs were written for the show.” That book was created by two poker buddies, Rick Elice (pronounced Ellis) and Marshall Brickman. The story would follow the lives of the singers, their rough years as working-class kids growing up in “Joisey.” Nelson noted that not everything fell easily into place. For starters, each of the four interviewed singers told their own version of their real-life struggles. “We finally decided to show the four sides of their story,” he said. “It became our ‘Rashomon.’ (referring to the classic Japanese film showing four sides of a murder). Rick always said that the show is true, without being factual.”

Frankie Valli, the unforgettable lead voice of the Four Seasons, had reflected on the show’s search for accuracy in an interview the 84-year-old singer gave during the quartet’s farewell tour at the Smith Center in Las Vegas in 2019.

“One of the things I learned really quickly was that it was really important if they’re going to do a story on your life in movie or book form, that at least 98 percent of it had to be the real truth. And I think that had an awful lot to do with the fact that Jersey Boys was the success that it was.” — Frankie Valli

We hold onto happy memories of the past. But it wasn’t always pretty. That wasn’t a worry for the creators of Jersey Boys – or for Frankie Valli. “He didn’t write songs for the good old days,” Nelson reminded. “All his songs take place in the present tense.” Yes, but that was so long ago. “Look, I’m happy if you think of it as nostalgia,” he said with a chuckle.

The Denver Center for the Performing Arts (DCPA) NewsCenter is the organization’s editorial platform for stories, announcements, interviews, and coverage of theatre and cultural programming in Colorado. We are committed to producing accurate, trustworthy, clearly sourced journalism that reflects our mission and serves our community.