BWW Reviews: BOYS NIGHT OUT at Metropolitan Room Shows Potential; Rat Pack Tribute Show Still Cheesy

By Stephen Hanks

Cabaret show producer Joseph Macchia (who is also a host at the Metropolitan Room) will be staging a second presentation of "Boys Night Out: The Music of the Rat Pack" at the Met Room on August 6 (9:30 pm), which will give him a month to work out the kinks after the show's somewhat shaky opening at the venue on June 18. It was Macchia's cabaret directing debut so perhaps he can be cut some slack if the show seemed as if it were scurrying somewhat aimlessly around a maze.

The stand-ins for the Rat Pack's big cheeses-Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis, Jr-are accomplished singer/theater performers Tom Gamblin, Danny Bolero (who also wrote the script) and Bernard Dotson. The threesome hasn't been typecast into set Rat Pack roles as is done in the Las Vegas tribute shows to these entertainment legends. While in "Boys Night Out" (the title of a 2004 Rat Pack Greatest Hits CD) the majority of the Sinatra classics are crooned by Gamblin (who was in the first national tour of Titantic and is also a manager at the Met Room), the Martin songs sung by Bolero (who appeared on Broadway as Kevin in In the Heights), and the Davis numbers delivered by Dotson (who appeared in the 2012 "Encores" production of Merrily We Roll Along), the script and the show's structure hasn't forced them to be Rat Pack impersonators. They're just three polished performers celebrating their joy for a trio of icons-whose heyday as the "Rat Pack" came in the early 1960s-and the songs they transformed into standards.

The June 18 show opened with the trio doing a fun mash-up of "Just in Time," "When You're Smiling," and "The Birth of the Blues," with a little "Candy Man" thrown in to sweeten things up (featuring a fine job on piano by musical director Tracy Stark). But the decision on how to introduce the personas of the Rat Pack players (pun intended) was rather curious and questionable. Interspersed between the verses of the Sammy Cahn/Jimmy Van Heusen ditty "Love & Marriage" (a Sinatra staple) was a supposedly humorous rundown of each group member's dating and marriage resume, which only served to make the three stars sound like misogynistic over-aged frat boys. Sinatra, Martin, and Davis (oh my!) may have been glorious singers and entertainers who could charm both men and women, but in their personal lives they chewed up females and spit them out like rodents spewing a stale piece of cheese. Metropolitan Room tech guru J.P. Perreaux would have shined the Rat Pack in a better light than did this script.

Of the three faux Rat Packers, Dotson (photo far left) was the breakout performer and while his first two solo numbers were songs popularized by Frank ("All of Me") and Dean ("Ain't That a Kick in the Head), his star turns came on the Sammy Davis, Jr. standards, "Gonna Build Me a Mountain," and "Mr. Bojangles," the latter of which was the highlight of the set. During Dotson's poignant rendition he exhibited some wonderfully self-choreographed dance movements while just standing at microphone.

Bolero (above right) was consistently strong throughout, wrapping his smooth tenor around the Martin classic "That's Amore," before channeling a sinuous Sammy on "Eee-O Eleven" (from the film Ocean's 11) and later a seductive Dino on Martin's hit "Sway." But Davis' classic "What Kind of Fool Am I?" from the Anthony Newley/Leslie Bricusse musical Stop the World I Want to Get Off, seemed a bit too much song for Bolero to handle, as he faded a bit during the number's big "bring it home" ending.

Gamblin's (left) performance was a mixed bag. His rendition of the Martin theme song, "Everybody Loves Somebody," lacked charisma and he didn't quite have a handle on the lyrics and smoothness of the hit Sinatra song "(Love Is) The Tender Trap" (also written by Cahn and Van Heusen). But Gamblin, who last year aced a Bing Crosby impersonation during a bit in the Off-Broadway revue Golf the Musical, made a strong comeback later in this show, turning wistful on the Sinatra ballad "A Day in the Life of a Fool," and going appropriately smoky and snarky on the mega Sinatra hit "That's Life"

Another one of the show's flaws was focusing most of the between-songs patter on the history of Ocean's 11, and by the end I felt as if I'd read the film's entire Wikipedia entry. A more entertaining homage to the Rat Pack would have been working in some of the hilarious shtick from their old Las Vegas shows, which was famous for the double entendres and the stars' self-deprecating humor. (Martin on his alcohol problem: "I don't drink anymore. I freeze it now and eat it like a Popsicle.")

The set's most fun group number came on Cahn and Van Heusen's "Mr. Booze," which was featured in Robin and the Seven Hoods, the film follow up to Ocean's 11. Dotson, Bolero and Gamblin delivered the raucous alcohol-confessional-at-a-revival meeting song as if they were singing "Sit Down You're Rocking the Boat" in the film Elmer Gantry. For the encore, the trio teamed terrifically on the Harold Arlen/Johnny Mercer classic "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)." If Macchia and Bolero can do some appropriate fine-tuning before the next show, then perhaps there will be more than one for the road for "Boys Night Out."

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