Into the stratosphere

David NORONA is crazy about his wife. He just hasn’t spoken to her in a couple of months. But that’s nothing compared with his telephone boycott -- he last uttered a long-distance word almost four months ago.

Norona’s particular vow of silence is peculiar because he’s hardly living a monk’s life of quiet contemplation. Instead, he’s been tap-tap-tapping on his trusty laptop, instant-messaging anyone who will have him. That can be a tricky mode of communication when you’re picking up milk at Ralphs.

“I’m fortunate that my wife does a lot of this stuff,” he says. “Frankly, I try to avoid places where I have to have long, extended conversations. It’s not a good long-term plan.”

And a good long-term plan is exactly what Norona is formulating. The star of “Jersey Boys” -- the new musical about the ‘60s vocal quartet the Four Seasons that will be at La Jolla Playhouse through the middle of this month -- he’s quite likely to head to New York for another run in the spring. What’s more, he regards his job as a marathon, not a mere run, and he’s already thinking about how he’ll continue to preserve his voice for a long-term engagement performing the ferociously demanding role of Frankie Valli, king of the falsetto.

“It’ll be hard,” he says, sitting at a table in his immaculate home in Van Nuys shortly before heading to La Jolla for a block of eight shows. “I think I’m going to continue to train outside of the demanding schedule. Right now, it’s like I’m running a race. I’m not training. So I’m going to take four or five months to figure this sucker out.”

Such dedication is paying off in nightly standing ovations and cheers from critics. Daryl H. Miller wrote in The Times that Norona’s “breathtakingly pure falsetto sounds remarkably like Valli’s even as it remains unique.” Variety’s Joel Hirschhorn said “Norona sings with high, piercing clarity,” adding dryly that the actor’s “Valli transcends the words of a record exec in the play: ‘Frankie’s OK, but he’s no Neil Sedaka.’ ”

“People are on their feet from the time the curtain call begins,” says Des McAnuff, the show’s director and La Jolla Playhouse’s artistic director. “It’s like a wave coming to shore: Some of the other actors get a little spike in the applause level, and his wave is an 18-footer. He gets a tremendous response from the audience because he plays a character that people can empathize with, because of his remarkable talent and also because of Frankie’s fortitude and the fact that he’s gone on in such a difficult profession.”

Counterintuitive as it might seem, there’s something almost humbling to Norona about the acclaim, because the 32-year-old actor, familiar to some audience members from a stint on HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” realizes that they’re not howling just for him. Each night, Valli is taking an invisible bow. “When you step up to the mike and people clap before you start singing, it’s sort of a tip-off that they’re coming with some great baggage,” Norona says. “To come in with that inherited value is great. You have a running start. And a lot of people are coming in with some huge memories. The cliche is that this is the soundtrack of their life, and it truly is. They’re remembering dates they had and first kisses and breakups. You don’t get that in a normal musical.”

In the sleight-of-hand world of the theater, Norona is both Frankie Valli and not Frankie Valli. The original article, born Francis Castelluccio in Newark, N.J., 67 years ago, is short, dark and handsome. The Miami-born Norona’s Cuban good looks hold up well compared with Valli’s Italian prototype, but the actor is of average height, 5-foot-8, as opposed to Valli’s compact 5-foot-5. Still, onstage Norona’s sinewy build comes across as Valli-like in contrast to those of his taller cast members.

As for his falsetto, Norona uses plenty of his natural singing voice in his renditions of Valli’s songs, following the advice of his voice coach, Eric Vetro, who has also worked with Tony winners Hugh Jackman and Marissa Jaret Winokur. Norona lets audiences’ memories fill in the gap.

Weathering the Seasons

He says he approached the songs “the way an actor would, the way you would imagine Anthony Hopkins approached Nixon” for Oliver Stone’s biopic. “You look at tapes, you listen, you manipulate your voice. And when you’re trying to manipulate your singing voice to a radically new place for extended amounts of time repeatedly, it can be very hard. It would be as if you tried to do Howard Cosell for three hours.

“So the best thing that Eric said to me was, ‘First sing the songs the way you would sing them. Then just layer the Frankie-isms lightly throughout. People will buy it and you’ll be healthy. That’s the most important thing, because if you don’t get through the run, it’s all for naught anyway.’ ”

Norona’s performance has impressed even its role model. “I thought it was spectacular,” says Valli, who weighed in at the actor’s audition and didn’t hear him again until opening night. “At first it was a little strange watching somebody do me. After I saw it the second time, I was quite pleased. In fact, I was flattered.”

“Jersey Boys” could be a commercial powerhouse for La Jolla, which hasn’t enjoyed such an enthusiastic response, according to McAnuff, since it staged the West Coast premiere of “Rent” in 1997 -- and that was after the musical had already scored four Tony Awards. The current show has been extended twice, for a total run of 15 weeks, and it won’t be further extended only because it can’t be: UC San Diego has dibs on the stage after Jan. 16. But “Jersey Boys” is an obvious candidate for Broadway, and talks are underway to take it there, although McAnuff is hesitant to use what he calls “the B word” short of a deal.

“We came out of the gate with an unknown product, and almost instantly, from the time we started previews, word of mouth set in and our box office was literally overwhelmed,” he says.

A musician himself, McAnuff has launched such hit musicals as “Tommy” and “Big River,” so it may be surprising that “Jersey Boys,” written by Marshall Brickman and Rick Elice, didn’t always look like a sure shot to him. Before it existed, he had told Bob Gaudio, the Four Seasons’ primary songwriter, that he wanted to do something with the group’s material. “I was a bit coy because I wasn’t sure I wanted to do a catalog show,” McAnuff says. “I haven’t really liked the catalog shows I’ve seen, even though I’ve admired their commercial success. As I met with Marshall and Rick over time and we started collaborating on the structure, I got pulled into it. I really wanted to do something where the rock ‘n’ roll was presentational as opposed to representational, so you don’t have people singing across tables to each other and you’re not forcing songs into dramatic situations.”

The true story of the Four Seasons is dramatic enough. The show traces the foursome’s beginnings as a ‘60s doo-wop group and its metamorphosis from the Variatones to the Romans to the Four Lovers before it evolved into the quartet whose stirring melodies scored more than $100 million in sales. Probably as unfamiliar to audiences as the group’s earlier incarnations are its brushes with crime. Group member Tommy DeVito did time after pulling a jewelry heist, and when DeVito plunged into debt, Valli committed the group to years of onerous touring to pay it off. The show ends with the Four Seasons’ induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990.

“I think they’re brave to put what’s onstage onstage, meaning Bob Gaudio and Frankie Valli,” Norona says. “It’s freakishly true, and a lot of stuff got left out, stuff that I don’t even know, that the creators have said to me, ‘If you only knew.’ ”

The story of the Four Seasons’ rise may lead to Norona’s own if he ends up starring on Broadway, where he began his career, albeit as an understudy. After graduating with a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, he waited in the wings -- and occasionally emerged -- for the original production of “Love! Valour! Compassion!” He then left theater behind when he and his dancer wife, Lisa Marie, came to Los Angeles seven years ago. Here he worked largely in television and, with the exception of a few opportunities such as his stint as the guidance counselor on “Six Feet Under,” found the experience fairly demoralizing.

“My juices needed to be regenerated,” he says. “I was kind of worn out, and I was thinking of walking away from the whole thing. I don’t use this word often because it can sound silly and pretentious, but if you decide to be an artist, it can be hard here. Because so much of television is not about that, except for the handful of shows where the creators are really trying to say something.”

The role of Valli, by contrast, is unusually demanding: Norona sings all 35 excerpts in the 2 1/2 -hour show, whereas a typical musical alternates numbers among different singers.

Norona didn’t take all that into account in the weeks of “Jersey Boys” rehearsal, and after the show opened, laryngitis became his sword of Damocles. “We unfortunately realized too late in the process that I can’t sing eight hours a day for extended periods -- nobody can -- and then go into a full-fledged run,” he says. “Because we were experimenting in the beginning, I was singing out all the time.”

He also started without an understudy, because the original run was only six weeks. After it was extended, however, he got the backup he needed and was able to take a weekend off to recover. Now he gets checkups every three weeks from an ear, nose and throat doctor, avoids alcohol and is gearing up for his hoped-for big break. Quietly.

“I think we started running a 50-yard dash,” he says. “I’ll approach rehearsal differently and just mark, where you sing lightly or don’t sing a song. You can’t go into a marathon having run a marathon the week before.”

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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: Jan. 16

Price: $49 to $65

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