Oh, what a legacy left by these ‘Jersey Boys’

The vocal quartet the Four Seasons popped into the Top 40 in the early 1960s with the impossibly high, tight harmonies of “Sherry,” “Big Girls Don’t Cry” and “Walk Like a Man.” But the group’s longest-charting single followed much later with the nostalgia-drenched “December, 1963 (Oh, What a Night).”

Looking back, as the lyrics put it, on “a very special time,” the tune recalled not only a bubble of American optimism before the divisiveness of the Vietnam War but the Four Seasons’ heyday as well. It’s a fitting theme song and gets prominent placement in “Jersey Boys,” a musical based on the group’s history that is being given its world premiere at La Jolla Playhouse.

Here’s the strange thing, though: The song is used chiefly as a punch line, when another key lyric -- “as I recall, it ended much too soon” -- is used to describe the, um, untimely release that one singer experiences during group sex.

Ewww.

Therein lies one of this show’s main problems. When the music -- re-created with stunning vocal verisimilitude by David Norona as Frankie Valli and Christian Hoff, Daniel Reichard and J. Robert Spencer as his bandmates -- is flowing, “Jersey Boys” builds to stratospheric levels of excitement. But when the connecting material calls attention to itself, as this rushed, cliche-ridden jumble too often does, it dulls an otherwise highly polished production.

“Jersey Boys” repeats a tale we’ve heard time and again -- namely, the American dream in which talent and willpower save people from dead-end lives. In this case, the dreamers are a bunch of budding hoodlums from the Newark, N.J., area who, as Tommy DeVito (Hoff), the group’s early ringleader, informs us in a thick Jersey accent, “want sump’n better.”

Against a setting (by Klara Zieglerova) of drab, industrial-looking metal and chain-link, Act 1 focuses on the long, hard road of finding the right mix of personnel and settling on a name (watch for the clever bit of business involving a malfunctioning neon bowling-alley sign).

The scenes are stock anecdotes from any number of biopics. At the moment Valli is asked to join the band for a song during a local gig, for instance, the girls in the joint suddenly become more interested because of the cute lead singer. Or consider what happens when Bob Gaudio (Reichard), who -- often in partnership with producer Bob Crewe -- will become the group’s hit-making songwriter, first tests the group on a song. He sits at a piano and begins to sing, with the others joining in until, in just a few short verses, they’ve discovered their defining sound.

That sound is propelled by Norona, whose breathtakingly pure falsetto sounds remarkably like Valli’s even as it remains unique. At Sunday’s glitzy opening, the audience, predisposed to be friendly, couldn’t refrain from giving “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” a show-stopping standing ovation, directed toward both Norona and the real Valli, who was in the house with Gaudio and Crewe.

Musically, the first half of the show charts the evolution of a sound that blended R&B;, doo-wop and Italian boy-singer influences. The story never pauses to consider how odd it was to have a girlish-sounding lead singer instruct listeners to “Walk Like a Man” or pine over Sherry, Marlena and Dawn -- but then, we probably shouldn’t expect hagiography to cross into that realm.

The book, by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, croaks along, off-key, as it spews four-letter words and blurts out such banalities as “looking to grab the brass ring,” “the stars are in alignment” or “the boat springs a leak.”

Nevertheless, the staging hums along as director Des McAnuff (he of “Big River” and “The Who’s Tommy”) ensures that settings change fluidly and that the visuals -- which include comic-book-style projections and live-action camera techniques -- remain eye-catching.

Wisely, the first act reaches its climax in a back-to-back rush of the Four Seasons’ early chart-busters. (Ron Melrose leads the rocking seven-player band.)

The second act contains built-in letdowns, because many of the big songs have already been exhausted and the story plunges ahead into dissension and the breakup of the core group.

The wry juxtapositions of song and story also begin to wear thin as we come to expect the group to sing “Stay” even as the members spin apart, or Valli and Gaudio to sing “Let’s Hang On (To What We’ve Got)” as they keep later incarnations of the group going.

In spirit, “Jersey Boys” is a cousin to such music-propelled projects as “Buddy ... The Buddy Holly Story.” It’s unlikely to be embraced by theater critics or rock historians. But nostalgia-hungry audiences will scream for more.

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‘Jersey Boys’

Where: La Jolla Playhouse, Mandell Weiss Theatre, Revelle College Drive at La Jolla Village Drive

When: 8 p.m. Tuesdays through Fridays, 2 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays

Ends: Nov. 21

Price: $45 to $57

Contact: (858) 550-1010 or www.LaJollaPlayhouse.com

Running Time: 2 hours, 25 minutes

Christian Hoff...Tommy DeVito

David Norona...Frankie Valli

Daniel Reichard...Bob Gaudio

J. Robert Spencer...Nick Massi

Book by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice. Most music by Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe. Director Des McAnuff. Music director Ron Melrose. Orchestrator Steve Orich. Choreographer Sergio Trujillo. Set Klara Zieglerova. Costumes Jess Goldstein. Lights Howell Binkley. Projection design Michael Clark. Sound Steve Canyon Kennedy. Production stage manager Richard Hester.