“Jersey Boys” Closes Sans Notice at Orleans

By Scott Roeben, on July 09 2024
2 min read 4 comments
Las Vegas Las Vegas Shows

The struggle is real for Broadway-style shows in Las Vegas, especially off-Strip.

“Jersey Boys” closed at the Orleans on July 7, 2024. The show opened January 17, 2024.

The producer of the show said, “Circumstances beyond our control have made this expedited decision necessary.” Translation: “We’re bleeding money, so we’re pulling the plug with four days notice.”

Two of the Four Seasons are still alive. Frankie Valli continues to lip-sync his way to music immortality with occasional shows at Westgate. Dude’s 90, cut him some slack.

This iteration of “Jersey Boys” was well-reviewed, but the economics of a producing a show at an off-Strip casino proved too great an obstacle to keep the show afloat.

The show, telling the story of Frankie Valli and The Four Seasons (the group broke up nearly 50 years ago), got its start in Las Vegas at Palazzo in May 2008. It had a solid run at Paris, opening March 6, 2012 and closing on Sep. 18, 2016, after 3,300 performances.

The Orleans version, not so much.

Here’s the notice to cast and crew about the show’s abrupt closure.

Sometimes, it’s best to just rip off the Band-Aid.

Just days prior to the announcement of the show closing, we shared that ticket sales were abysmal.

There was ample behind-the-scenes drama (union questions, business partners bailing) leading to the curtain falling on “Jersey Boys” at Orleans, and we would share the details, but we are very busy doing market research related to how much emotional distress one person can endure at the hands of video poker.

Longshots are called that for a reason. Opening a show like “Jersey Boys” in Vegas right now, when public tastes have moved toward sports, superstar residencies and The Sphere, is a huge gamble.

We feel for the artists who suffer when a show closes (especially with such little notice), but folks involved with live theater are pretty much used to such horseshit.

There’s no news about what’s next for the showroom at Orleans, but the casino has recently become the landing spot for a number of shows displaced by closures of mid-sized venues on The Strip. Keeping production costs low is the key to success for these spunky efforts of varying quality.

While we didn’t get to see “Jersey Boys” at Orleans, props to the producers for trying to keep the dream of theater alive in Las Vegas, against all odds.