A Frank Sinatra musical is a great opportunity: a titan of the 20th century, he was a complex figure who was both emblematic of America and in many ways an outsider to it. He also had a pretty stonking songbook.
But this sauceless bio-musical manages to do the impressive job of acknowledging Sinatra’s many, uh, foibles while making him seem incredibly bland as a human being. Joel Harper-Jackson’s Frank comes across like the work experience guy in his own life, drifting through an endless stream of affairs on something like autopilot, as if he simply couldn’t see any other option other than to sleep with a stream of hot Hollywood starlets behind his wife’s back.
Phoebe Panaretos as his first wife Nancy Sinatra does at least express some exasperation about how little he’s around for their children. But we’re never far away from somebody telling Sinatra that he’s a great dad. His mob ties are crisply raised and then shot down. He boozes and fights but there’s never any danger there. It would be excessive to describe it as gaslighting, but it does feel like the MO is to show Ol’ Blue Eyes doing a series of things that would normally be viewed as fairly morally objectionble and then just sort of shrug and act like it’s not worth caring about.
We meet Frank at the peak of his early success, as he prepares to wave goodbye to his family in New Jersey to go and make it in the movies. Before too long, though, his star is on the wane, just as his affair with Villafane’s alluringly free-spirited Ava goes public. Somewhat leavened by some decent jokes – Jenna Russell is scene-stealing as his filter-free mother Dolly Sinatra – it trudges to his comeback via his Oscar-winning turn in From Here to Eternity.
But DiPietro’s book doesn’t really have much of a thesis about any of this: there is the general suggestion that a poor choice of material and the Gardner affair were to blame for his slump. But it’s all quite vague and to a large extent it just seems to be saying Frank’s wilderness years were ‘one of those things’. It’s also frustratingly opaque on the appeal of Sinatra. Fair play, it does explore why From Here to Eternity was a big deal. But beyond some wishy washy stuff about him only singing songs that meant something to him, it’s never really explained why he was a good or important singer – it’s depicted as his day job while he shags around and tries to make it iOf course, Sinatra’s songs are present throughout, but they’re almost entirely non-diegetic. Nobody’s ever like, ‘Wow, “Fly Me to the Moon”, you’ve got a real banger there, Frank’. His music is only really discussed by way of noting his career is going poorly.
If you really like Frank Sinatra, this is absolutely fine. But it’s so far from exceptional. And for a big West End show with clear Broadway aspirations it should be so much better. The last massive bio-musical was MJ. It had its problems. It also had a canny book by a world-class playwright (Lynn Nottage) and, more to the point, its lead actor Myles Frost embodied all that was electrifying about Michael Jackson as singer and dancer.
Marshall’s production is low on wow factor spectacle. But it really falls on not having a lead who can channel Sinatra’s magnetism, and surely a large part of that comes down to the fact that the real man was a charismatic womaniser, and this guy is a blandly nice family man who just happens to keep sleeping with other women. To be fair to Harper-Jackson, I strongly suspect the tone of his performance is an intentional fudge to keep the various stakeholders in Sinatra the Musical happy. But he just comes across as a rizz-free charisma void.
