“My Way” is ostensibly a 56-song tribute to Frank Sinatra, but like love, that’s a tender trap.
Sinatra was The Chairman, but he never wrote (or read) a note. “My Way” is more accurately an elegant tribute to great American songwriters, most prominently Sammy Cahn.
But just try to sell “Sammy Cahn’s Way.”
To truly celebrate Sinatra would mean to celebrate The Voice: the vocal technique, the breath control, the way he held phrases, the way he slid from note to note. Harry Connick Jr. once said: “He must have an extra set of lungs.”
To anyone who tries to re-create that, good luck.
Thankfully, that’s not what director David Grapes is after here. The music is (a bit too meticulously) organized into 10 medley categories such as Broadway, love and marriage, cities, summer, the moon and survival.
Rather than offering lame impersonators or creating unique characters, Grape’s fab foursome each esoterically represents Sinatra at different times in his life. For example, Fran Prisco is a cartoonish young Sinatra in his Tommy Dorsey crooner years (“Makin’ Whoopee” and “My Kind of Town”), while the cooler John Fredo sings the more sophisticated signature numbers of the Rat Pack era (“One for My Baby” and “That’s Life”).
Laura Ryan and Shannan Steele represent the two kinds of women Sinatra was most attracted to – Ryan as the harder-edged, worldy Ava Gardner type; Steele the more idealistic and romantic embodiment of Mia Farrow. So Ryan gets the Ella Fitzgerald variety of torch songs about love gone wrong (“My Funny Valentine”) while Steele sings about a more positive love (“You Go to My Head”).
The results are mixed. If audiences don’t “get it,” Fredo looks and sounds so much like Sinatra that some will logically presume him to “be” Sinatra. That brings impossible vocal comparisons on songs such as “Summer Wind.”
The toe-tapping score features 37 songwriters, with nine tunes by Cahn, four by Cole Porter, and three each by Harold Arlen and Rodgers and Hart. Of some controversy is that musical director Lee Stametz’s arrangements often stray from Sinatra’s signature recordings. “Witchcraft,” for example, is turned regrettably comic. But otherwise, diversity is good, and varying from the Nelson Riddle blueprints helps bring out the best in each vocalist.
The cast is all top-notch. Fredo has great presence and a terrific tap, Prisco great comic flair and Steele wicked dancing feet. But Ryan impresses most with the purity of her vocal technique. Watching her tackle everything from “The Way You Look Tonight” to “L.A. Is My Lady,” I recalled how Sinatra once said his greatest inspiration was to “play” his own voice the way Dorsey might play his trombone. On “All the Way,” Ryan plays her voice like a grand piano.
When all four sing together (“Strangers in the Night”), the Manhattan Transfer-like harmonies go down smoother than a martini.
But while the revue looks and sounds gorgeous, it’s light as a feather. Absent any real characterizations, you never learn anything new or poignant about Sinatra – such as that his affair with Gardner cost him his wife, his Columbia record deal, his film contract and his agent, leaving him washed up at 34.
Instead the audience gets one glossy, high-stepping medley after another, interspersed by treacly dialogue that’s nearly as lame as in the Denver Center’s other recent sanitized musical eulogy, to John Denver. Actors merely toss out widely known facts and sappy quotes, as if the next line will be a notice about the location of the graveside service to follow.
At one point, Ryan is made to raise a glass and tell the audience “the master is gone … but the voice will live forever.” It’s too much reverence and not enough attitude. Spare us the square, babies.
But “My Way” is likely ticketed for a long run. A song begins and heads lean on shoulders in unison. Older listeners are transported to childhood. Their first date. Their first kiss.
A mod youngster may not know this music yet, but he couldn’t do much better for a first date. The first kiss ought to be in the bag.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-820-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“My Way”
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SINATRA TRIBUTE|Denver Center Attractions|Created by David Grapes and Todd Olson|Directed by Grapes|Starring Laura Ryan, Shannan Steele, John Fredo and Fran Prisco|Garner Galleria Theatre at the Denver Performing Arts Complex, 14th and Curtis streets|OPEN-ENDED|7:30 p.m. Tuesdays-Fridays, 2 and 7:30 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays|2 hours, 20 minutes|$32-$38|303-893-4100, 866-464-2626 or denver center.org (800-641-1222 outside Denver)
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“NOISES OFF” Creede Repertory Theatre opens its 40th season tonight with the daddy of all contemporary farces. “Lumberjacks in Love” joins the summer circuit June 10 and “Light up the Sky” June 24, at 124 N. Main St. Showtimes vary. $15-$24 (866-658-2540).
“THE MERCY SEAT” Paragon Theatre Company returns with Neil LaBute’s scathing drama set on Sept. 12, 2001, about two narcissistic New York lovers who see an exhilarating opportunity in the aftermath of the World Trade Center tragedy. Opens Saturday, then 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays at the Phoenix Theatre, 1124 Santa Fe Drive. Tickets $13-$15 (303-300-2210).
“DOWN THE ROAD” In preparation for the Colorado Community Theatre Coalition’s annual competition involving 11 local troupes June 15-18 in Fort Morgan, the Evergreen players are going down the road to present Lee Blessing’s drama of a serial killer and the married couple who agree to write his biography. 7:30 tonight and Saturday at the Buntport Theater, 717 Lipan St. $12-$15 (303-674-4934).
-John Moore
