A Falsetto For All Seasons

John Lloyd Young may have the role of a lifetime playing in the smash-hit Broadway musical “Jersey Boys.” But his New York concert debut at the Allen Room on Saturday evening as part of Lincoln Center’s American Songbook series suggested that his career milestone could turn into a millstone.

Instead of breaking out of the falsetto pyrotechnics that make him Frankie Valli’s virtual vocal double resurrecting the hits of the Four Seasons, he applied the same technique to nearly two dozen songs, many from the same era.

There is no more frivolous period in American pop than the early 1960s, when the rock ’n’ roll revolution was temporarily co-opted by plasticized teen idols and cheap studio gimmickry. Recapturing the playful pop spirit of the time requires a sense of humor with a campy undertow, along with a heartfelt identification with the keening teenage angst that melted all that plastic.

At the first of two shows on Saturday Mr. Young revealed an earnest, stiff-limbed stage personality that dampened the exuberance of songs like “Lightning Strikes,” “Runaway” and “Crying,” signature hits for Lou Christie, Del Shannon and Roy Orbison. His medley of three Sam Cooke hits — “Cupid,” “Wonderful World” and “Another Saturday Night” — suffered by comparison to the original versions in which Cooke’s soulful interpretations added incalculable depth and stylistic nuance.

Mr. Young has three voices. His most natural sound is his relaxed generic crooning, heard only once, on a polished rendition of “Till.” The rest of the time he alternated between a high buzzing tenor and a hard alley-cat falsetto. The most problematic number was a fruitless attempt to channel Tina Turner in a robotic falsetto rendition of “Private Dancer.”

He was not well served by a band and two backup singers under the direction of Ed Alstrom that captured the tinny sound and mechanized beats of early-’60s pop but failed to include crucial textural ingredients of vintage hits like the musitron, the electronic organ that gave “Runaway” its giddy, spinning momentum.

Saturday’s program built up to the “Jersey Boys” showstopper “Can’t Take My Eyes Off You.” A song that might have redeemed the evening, had it been given room to expand and provide the cathartic release that everyone was waiting for, was cut short, leaving the audience frustrated.

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