Interview: Adam Marino And Mike Backes of JERSEY BOYS at Short North Stage

When Mike Backes found out he was cast as Tommy DeVito in Short North Stage’s upcoming production of JERSEY BOYS, one of the first people he called was someone he had never met before: Adam Marino who will be playing Frankie Valli in the show.

“We’ve been chatting a lot,” Backes said. “Immediately after I was cast, I asked Dionysia (Williams Velazco, the associate art director at Short North Stage) who else was in the show. I wanted us to get to know each other before we got on stage because it has such a short rehearsal time.”

The show runs Nov. 21 through Dec. 29 at the Garden Theater (1187 N. High Street in downtown Columbus).
Both Backes and Marino have a long, but varied history with JERSEY BOYS, the bio-musical of Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. The two probably have performed close to 400 shows in the jukebox musical by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice.

The month and a half run in Columbus will be the ninth time Marino has had a run as Valli since 2022. It’s Backes’ fourth time being in the show, including a year and a half long residency in Las Vegas, but his first time being DeVito full time.

“What's so fun about (doing JERSEY BOYS) is every cast you're a part of is very different,” Marino said. “Everybody has a different take and everybody has different energies to the show. There are certain lines each company punches differently.”

According to Marino, one of the characters that has a different feel to him in each show is DeVito. Some of the DeVitos are a little angrier, some a little more nonchalant, and are more scheming behind everything.

Backes said DeVito is often misunderstood.

“Tommy is the guy everybody loves to hate,” said Backes, who was a swing when JERSEY BOYS debuted in Las Vegas. “I don't see him as a villain. That’s the way a lot of people play him, but I think it’s a mistake personally.

“He's just trying to get this group to the top. He doesn't think he's doing anything wrong. He's living his life the way he's always lived it.”

Backes grew up listening to The Four Seasons on family car rides. He was the understudy for the Bob Gaudio role in the show’s 2008 run in Las Vegas. He played six different roles on stage including his one and only shot at playing DeVito.

His most memorable performance in Las Vegas came when the actor playing Gaudio slipped on stage mid-show and Backes was pressed into service.

“I was getting fit for a costume and all of a sudden, I heard, ‘Mike Backes to the stage, please,’” he said. “Two other swings come running up to me, one has a water bottle and the other has my script. I said, ‘What is going on?’”

Right before what Backes terms as “the big three,” the part of the show where the Four Seasons perform their number one hits, “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry,” and “Walk Like a Man,” the actor playing Gaudio injured his back after a fall and literally had to crawl off stage, bringing the show to a dead stop. Jeremy Kushnier, who was playing DeVito, said to Backes’ character, “Bob you ready back there?”

“I said, ‘As ready as I am going to be,’” Backes recalled with a laugh. “I walked out there and we went right into ‘Sherry.’ The crowd went nuts because they knew I was an understudy.”

Since Las Vegas, the DeVito role has been Backe’s white whale. Every time he saw that a company was going to do JERSEY BOYS, he’d send in his audition tape, only to find out he didn’t make the cut.

“It's been over a decade of me always auditioning but it never working out,” Backes said.

Backes thought it probably wasn’t going to work out with Short North Stage as well. Backes had been cast in WILD NIGHT for the company, but he backed out when he was booked for a show on a cruise ship.

“I was just scrolling on the internet at 2:00 a.m. and I saw SNS was doing JERSEY BOYS,” he said. “I sent a long e-mail to Dionysia, saying ‘I don’t know if there’s any hard feelings about WILD PARTY, but I would really like to put a tape together for you because I am dying to play Tommy DeVito.’

“She sent me a nice e-mail back and two weeks after I sent them my tape, they offered me the job.”

While Backes longed to play DeVito, Marino has spent much of the last two years being Frankie Valli. Marino had never heard of the group until he saw JERSEY BOYS when he was in college.

“I knew maybe two Four Season songs, growing up,” Marino said. “I went to the show on a whim because they had student rush tickets. (After I saw it) I was like, ‘I want to learn how to do (Valli’s falsetto voice).’”

Armed with the original Broadway soundtrack, the actor spent hours in his car, listening to and trying to sing like Valli

“I probably lost my voice 1000 times until I learned how to sing (that high falsetto),” Marino said. “A lot of it was trial by fire and luckily I made it through. I was determined to learn how to do it. I'm grateful I figured it out.”
Since 2022, Marino has spent more evenings as Valli than he has as himself.

“I'd really like to meet (Valli) at some point,” Marino said. “I would just thank him and tell him, ‘You've been such an inspiration to me, both personally and professionally. I’ve spent a good part of my career trying to play you.’”

Backes on the other hand has had a chance to meet and greet most of the Four Seasons when Valli, Gaudio, and DeVito attended the show in Las Vegas.

Just as in JERSEY BOYS, DeVito, who died Sept. 21, 2020, at 92 after contracting COVID 19, spent nearly all his post Four Seasons life in Las Vegas.

“I told him, ‘It’s an honor to meet you and thank you for coming to the show,’” Backes said. “He was very kind to me and he became friendly with Deven (May who was playing DeVito in the show).

“That whole part about him having to stay in Vegas is all true. When Rick and Marshall sat with these guys to interview them for the show, they had no idea what they were getting into. The jukebox musical suddenly became a lot more.”

And the show has become a lot more to Marino and Backes than just another musical. There’s a line in the show that reads, ‘family is everything.’ Both actors said that family extends to the people working in the show.

“It's a brotherhood and it's a family,” Marino said. “And within that family, there’s a lot of positives and a lot of dynamics you have to figure out.”

Photos courtesy of Adam Marino and Mike Backes

To post a comment, you must register and login.