Teams of archaeologists could labour for decades without unearthing the point of this show. Lavishly mounted but lamely written and characterised, it imperfectly hammers hits from Frank Sinatra’s back catalogue into a misconceived triumph-over-adversity narrative that covers nine years of his life. Why? For whom?
It goes from the “swoonatra” crooning era with Benny Goodman’s band in 1945 to his Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing “upstart Guinea” Maggio in From Here to Eternity in 1954. In between, his wife and kids are neglected in pursuit of his singing and screen careers and his priapic desires. (The dialogue is full of “Why, Lana Turner/Marlene Dietrich/Ava Gardner, fancy meeting you here” stuff.) His reputation falls into the toilet until revived by that Academy Award and a team-up with Nelson Riddle which resulted in - we are told as an afterthought - the invention of the concept album.
One problem is that Old Blue Eyes was in this period, and continued to be, a grade-A shit - selfish, temperamental, violent, compulsively unfaithful - so it’s kinda hard to sympathise with or root for him. Attempts to play up his opposition to segregation and his own experiences of anti-Italian racism sound like special pleading, and there are naked bits of exposition to sanitise his personality. “I’ve seen you pay hospital bills for total strangers!” blurts his press agent George. “Damn perforated eardrum!” says Frank himself, explaining his lack of war service. Yada yada yada.
A bigger issue is who this show is aimed at. Sinatra has been dead 28 years and has been resurrected through CGI and now AI several times. Most of his original fans are, like Brexit voters, steadily dropping off the perch. Even if new generations are rediscovering him, do they want to pay West End prices for an imperfect karaoke version, albeit with a big band, nice sets and a huge cast in flashy costumes?
To be fair, Joel Harper-Jackson does a creditable job of capturing the smooth-bore cadences of Sinatra’s stylings, down to the echoes of Sicily and Hoboken, Noo Joisey, but he’s not an emotional singer. Billie Holliday pops up in a bar to explain that it’s their ability to “bend the notes at the end of the phrase” that makes them both uniquely expressive vocalists, before they embark on a duet of One For My Baby which consummately disproves that theory.
It’s not Harper-Jackson’s fault he looks little like the wiry young Sinatra (indeed, he looks exactly like the similarly Brylcreemed, buff and beaming actor who briefly plays Gene Kelly). But he lacks charisma and his boxy suits appear to be wearing him, rather than the other way round. Ana Villafañe’s Ava Gardner, meanwhile, is a mane-tossing cartoon of liberated sensuality, forever belting herself into a post-coital trench coat over slinky gowns or lingerie.
Similar one-note characterisations are given by Phoebe Panteros as Frank’s wife Nancy (long-suffering), Jenna Russell as his mom Dolly (hard-boiled) and Lee Zarrett as George (anxious). Again, it’s not their fault. Writer Joe DiPietro’s script abounds with clichés that Kathleen Marshall’s pedestrian direction does nothing to curb, though her choreography is better. Between them these two have won five Tony Awards, by the way, but they had to go to Birmingham (in the West Midlands, not Alabama) to get this show off the ground in 2023.
There are effective big routines here, one in Pantone blazers, one in pastel gowns, and one in tailcoats that seems to have strayed in from a completely different show. Peter McKintosh’s sets evocatively sketch in the skylines of Manhattan and Houston and hangouts like Ciro’s and the Brown Derby. There’s a big, brassy orchestra to balance the large acting ensemble.
A lot of money has been spent here, but for what? To furnish a vehicle for the hits, which are duly trotted out, though often jarringly reframed for two mismatched voices. Come Fly With Me becomes a Hollywood shagathon. My Way is repurposed to plumb Frank’s lowest ebb. The mawkish deployment of Nancy With the Laughing Face (about his daughter, not his wife) made me slightly sick in my mouth. New York, New York accompanies the curtain call.
These remain, mostly, great songs. But who wants to hear them in a rickety, partial and hagiographic stage musical that whitewashes a complicated and frankly unpleasant individual? Frankly Unpleasant: now that’s the Sinatra musical I might pay to see.
Booking to April 10, sinatrathemusical.com
