First, a clarification: Jersey Boys has nothing to do with guys from the most southerly of the British Isles, just off the Normandy coast. The Jersey in this case is New, it is the opposite of picturesque, and its lads are the toast of Broadway. Since opening in 2006, Jersey Boys - the story of the 1960s pop sensation the Four Seasons - has netted millions of dollars at the box office. And the popularity isn't limited to New York (a short car ride from New Jersey, after all). There is a separate run in Chicago as well as a national tour. Now the blockbuster's producers are hoping to score with a different demographic when the show opens at the Prince Edward Theatre in London on March 18.

Conventional wisdom holds that for a musical to have long-lived international appeal, it should concern exotic subject matter. Set your show in a fantastic locale or in a distant period, and audiences can project on to its romantic strangeness. Witness classics such as Cats, Phantom of the Opera, even Fiddler on the Roof. Localism is a no-no. Jersey Boys flouts that rule, depicting four Italian-American youths from the mobbed-up industrial wasteland of New Jersey clawing their way to fame and fortune as the Four Seasons. It's a jaunty rags-to-riches story with catchy songs such as Beggin' and Can't Take My Eyes Off You - but will English audiences relate to it?

“Many of us knew the songs, but very few knew the story behind the songs,” points out the director Des McAnuff. The man who brought The Who's Tommy to life on Broadway in 1993 certainly knows his way around a rock catalogue, and how to avoid making it look naff in a theatrical context. “You have these very recognisable tunes, and then bodies in trunks of cars. There is a weird juxtaposition.”

McAnuff is referring to the extra spice that makes Jersey Boys stand out from the pack of nostalgic jukebox musicals: a true-crime backstory. Audiences who know the Four Seasons through their bubblegum hits showcasing Frankie Valli's stratospheric falsetto will be surprised to learn that the band hid a steamy past.

Before their Top 40 hit Sherry in 1962, the guitarist Tommy DeVito and the bassist Nick Massi had spent several years in jail for various petty crimes. In addition, the band maintained ties with Mafia mobsters. Even after the big hits Sherry, Big Girls Don't Cry and Walk Like a Man there were troubles. In 1969, the band was out of favour with psychedelic listeners, and Valli and Gaudio discovered that DeVito had accumulated large debts. DeVito agreed to be bought out of the band and the remaining members had to work feverishly to pay off the money.

“If you pull the songs out, it's a play,” McAnuff says. “And it's quite different from most American musicals. It is an unusual hybrid. I've described it as a musical for people who don't like musicals.” McAnuff says that he isn't changing a thing for the London version, but he expects this production to be best in terms of acting.

When the director and his team were polishing Jersey Boys for its world premiere in La Jolla, California, in 2005, he was careful to cast actors with rock backgrounds. “We wanted to be sure we were portraying the evolution of a real band,” McAnuff says. “We wanted that integrity. You saw the actors playing rock'n'roll, so the audience could invest in those characters and suspend their disbelief: those guys are the Seasons.”

Achieving musical authenticity will be key. Charles Alexander, a former editor for Time magazine and an expert on all things Four Seasons (he contributed liner notes to the box set Jersey Beat), cites Britain as second only to America in terms of Four Seasons fandom. “There aren't Beatles-size numbers of Seasons fans in the world, but whether they are in Teaneck, London, Montreal or Santiago, they are devoted,” Alexander says. “Seasons fans tend to be fans for life. There is something about Valli's voice that is like a drug to a suscept-ible mind.” He also notes that the Northern Soul movement around Manchester in the 1970s helped to sustain Valli and the Seasons' popularity.

Another potential source of appeal is class, which gives the libretto much of its pathos and comedy. “The British are still very conscious of class, while we in America like to think that we've transcended all that,” McAnuff says. “Class discrimination is supposedly illegal, but it still does exist,” notes Glenn Carter, who plays the foul-mouthed ne'er-do-well Tommy DeVito. “It's impossible to avoid people's attitudes towards those who are more or less educated. Until everyone has equal access to education there is going to be a class system. And not even an invisible one.”

For most Americans, New Jersey is synonymous with low class - an uncouth, culture-free zone of strip malls and civic neglect. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Jersey Boys begins, the Garden State didn't have quite the trashy reputation that it holds today, but it still lived under the shadow of neighbouring New York. It was a state in decline, riddled with corruption, rife with organised crime and ethnic tension. Of course, the upside to coming from the nastiest place on earth means that you can only go up.

Although Jersey Boys gets its spark from the love-hate interplay between its four male leads (who include Stephen Ashfield as Gaudio and Phillip Bulcock as Massi), there is no doubt that the vocal burden falls on Ryan Molloy playing Valli. This insanely demanding role requires a performer who not only has the acting chops to play Valli from about age 17 to 53, but the pipes to reach those falsetto highs in more than 20 numbers threaded throughout the show.

It's daunting stuff and Molloy is keenly aware of the vocal challenge. “It's the most singing that anyone's done in a show, ever,” Molloy says after a rehearsal with a rueful laugh. “It's a real Everest of a show.”

As for the characters' thick “dese, dem and dose” accents and “fuggedaboutit” manners, Carter doesn't foresee any cultural barriers. “We know our Goodfellas, A Bronx Tale, The Sopranos - it's all become part of our knowledge of American culture.”

Molloy says that he can relate to Valli's youth, which started out in a low-income housing development. “I was raised in a North Shields council estate in a rough area,” Molloy recalls. “It was tough living there. I used to hang out with my cousin a lot and he's done about 15 years in jail. He just got out this year.”

If all goes well with Jersey Boys, the only thing Molloy will be stealing is hearts.

Jersey Boys, Prince Edward Theatre, Old Compton Street, London W1 (www.prince- edward-theatre.co.uk 020-7447 5400), previewing now, opens Mar 18

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