Review: SINATRA THE MUSICAL, Aldwych Theatre
The early life of Ol' Blue Eyes gets the West End treatment.
The stories about Francis Albert Sinatra are endless. Two decades before Beatlemania hit the States, thousands of girls queued around the block so they could see the short, skinny kid from Hoboken sing while they cried, screamed and fainted. He had a thick New Jersey accent and a thin skin, punching one critic in the back of the head and physically threatening other members of the press. His friendship with mob members and their goons supposedly helped him out of a recording contract and for decades the FBI kept a file on him running to thousands of pages. He was close friends with Marilyn Monroe and gifted her a White Maltese dog; she named it “Maf”, short for Mafia Honey, just to wind him up. At the age of 48, he dated a teenage Mia Farrow and the two eventually married in 1966.
And that’s before mentioning his violent reaction to seeing a thinly-veiled version of himself in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather, how he (allegedly) helped JFK and (definitely) helped Ronald Reagan into the White House, the kidnap and ransom of his son Frank Jnr, how his improvised scatting on “Strangers In The Night” inspired the name of cartoon dog Scooby Doo, and how he and his Rat Pack buddies gloriously misbehaved in his adopted home town of Las Vegas.
Not that you would know much of this from Sinatra The Musical which had a run in Birmingham in 2023 and has now sashayed into the West End. This is the latest musical biopic from writer Joe DiPietro, a man who has tasted both great success (with the Tony-winning Memphis) and great failure (the New York Times labelled his Diana “aesthetically and morally mortifying”). For both of those, fellow New Jersey native and Bon Jovi keyboardist David Bryan composed the music but here DiPietro smartly makes extensive use of Sinatra’s decades-long back catalogue.
The show focuses on the early career of the singer the newspapers variously called “Swoonatra” and “The Voice” (both at the suggestion of his savvy PR man George Evans, the same man who also paid several female audience members to cry, scream and faint). We go from Ol' Blue Eyes' breakout at the Paramount Theatre on New Year's Eve 1942, through the infamous affair with Hollywood goddess Ava Gardner and his catastrophic career collapse on stage and in films, to the comeback thanks to his 1953 Oscar for From Here to Eternity and the Capitol Records deal. That tight timeline, though, doesn’t stop later songs like a snappy “Fly Me To The Moon”, new addition “My Way” or the show-closing “New York, New York” being shoehorned in.
As well as being theatre of the eyes, the ears and occasionally the loins, this musical requires some theatre of the mind too when it comes to watching the Chairman Of The Board strut his stuff. Indeed, we have to squint somewhat to imagine the well-built Joel Harper-Jackson (replacing Birmingham’s Matt Doyle) with his six-pack and mousy brown locks as the gaunt raven-haired crooner who was so sensitive about his height that he walked around in elevator shoes.
That disconnect becomes much more pointed later on when we see Sinatra furiously pleading with movie producer Harry Cohn for the part of Angelo Maggio, despite Cohn’s clear preference for Eli Wallach. Sinatra challenges the casting decision and asks why the rare role of a major Italian-American character is not being given to an actor who actually shares that background. In an era when a similar discussion is being had about gay, Asian and Jewish characters, the casting directors of Sinatra could be asked the same question.
Those hoping to see the professional evolution of one of America’s greatest vocal talents will leave disappointed. DiPietro nods to key gigs on stage and screen (his miscasting as a priest in 1948 flop The Miracle of the Bells is treated as a running joke) but otherwise contextualises the singer in terms of his bedhopping ways and the women in his life.
Australian actor Phoebe Panaretos gives solid service as the beleaguered wife who puts up with the lusty intentions of her husband's fans. Her loyalty is stretched and finally snaps when Sinatra moves in with Gardner (Ana Villafañe, scintillating) after torrid nights with the actor’s bestie Lana Turner (Becky Anderson, sparkling) and Marlene Dietrich (Allana Taylor, spot on). Melissa Nettleford’s elegant Billie Holiday wanders in later as if from another musical entirely, offering wise counsel and a beautifully sweet duet.
Of course, no story about an Italian man can obviously be complete without his Italian mama making an appearance. Beloved by fans of musical theatre and Red Dwarf, Jenna Russell (taking over from Birmingham’s Dawn Buckland) slowly slides into the part: it takes about an hour for Dolly Sinatra’s accent to fully migrate across the Atlantic and, when it does, it sounds like Russell has spent the last month binging The Sopranos from the smoky backroom of the Bada Bing. Whether that’s true or not, I have no idea. All I’m saying is: should I be found next week sleeping with the fishes at the bottom of the Thames, say a little prayer for me and move on.
Director Kathleen Marshall doubles up as the choreographer and turns out electric dance routines that make up in pizzazz what they lack in variety. Kudos goes to Peter McKintosh’s evocative set design slips in fluidly from the left, right, back and up above as we are whizzed from New York concert hall to Hollywood bedrooms and Sinatra’s family home. The projections by Akhila Krishnan give depth and resonance to the sense of time and place and make up for DiPietro’s deficiencies in these areas while lighting designer Bruno Poet (award-nominated for his work on Broadway for Tina: The Tina Turner Musical) sets the mood wonderfully. Musical supervisor Gareth Valentine and his orchestra pull out all the stops in recreating the big band sound.
Portraying a mid-twentieth century American musical icon in the here and now is no easy business in London: the catastrophe that was Layered Reality’s Elvis Evolution led to the closure of not just that show but Layered Reality itself and all of its other productions. Sinatra works hard to ground our hero by showing the battles he fought for himself and others, the hills he climbed and, out of desperation, how close he came to taking his own life. Despite all that, and factoring in a running time of close to three hours, the man and his motivations remain frustratingly opaque. On top of that, the emotionally vacant storyline boils down to a run-of-the-mill tale of a man haunted by his carnal desires and the women left to pick up the pieces after him. The tragically underrated Walk Hard parodied all this with more wit and and insight and in 2007.
DiPietro has deliberately chosen to illustrate his subject from a palate based on a small but crucial period of his career. By narrowing the musical’s scope to his early years, though, the production finishes well short of the better known chapters of his life, leaving the narrative feeling frustratingly incomplete. Other London musicals about Tina Turner, Shaka Khan and Michael Jackson all paint a broader picture, capturing the complexity of their subjects’ legacies in a way that truly reflects how they lived life their own way. Will DiPietro have regrets over this choice? Maybe a few.
Sinatra The Musical continues until 10 April.
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