As crazy as it may sound, the one thing I was most looking forward to about coming home to San Francisco for Thanksgiving was to going to watch the new Jersey Boys perform at the Union Square Tree Lighting. After watching (and falling in love with) the amazing Jarrod Spector and the rest of the now-in-Chicago cast perform at the Curran twice over the summer (and that one time when he and most of the other cast wasn't there) and catching clips of their performance at Union Square in July that I missed, I had high expectations for this new cast.
Getting priority over a family Thanksgiving dinner, my grandmother's birthday dinner, and having an entire twelve-person back-from-college reunion night out planned around them and their performance inherently raised the stakes, and I am sorry to say that neither my nor my friends' expectations were met that night.
The crowd at Union Square was insane; I arrived at 5:20 pm and still had to squeeze my way to the front (causing a few disgruntled and outraged outbursts from the people I squeezed in between on the way up) to meet my friend. Our spot in the crowd wasn't great and there were quite a few tall dads with young kids on their shoulders in front of us, but we still had a pretty good side-view of the stage.
(By the way, that was not me singing along - it was the people in front of me!)
I definitely prefer Jarrod Spector's sweet, melt-my-heart voice to Rick Faugno's more in-your-face, forceful voice.
The magic just wasn't there with this cast, and my friends all pretty much agreed. There were quite a few people there who have never seen Jersey Boys or the now-in-Chicago cast perform, so they certainly missed out on something truly amazing!
The new Jersey Boys also chose one of the most annoying Christmas carols to perform. Every time I hear "Little Drummer Boy," I see Angela from The Office singing it on the karaoke machine at their Christmas party. I wish they had chosen a more cheery and fun song to sing.
The tree lighting itself was very... anticlimactic.
"Let's go home," said my friend once the lights were flicked on, and apparently, the entire crowd at Union Square that night was thinking the exact same thing because the streets and roads around Union Square were literally flooded with people afterwards.
It was quite the sight, and sadly, attempting to navigate the crowds and the sheer chaos to find my friends was probably the most exciting part of the Tree Lighting experience.
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