What are the ingredients to a successful musical?
Well, you'd assume the catalogue and life story of one of the greatest entertainers of all time, all brought alive by a cast and creative team dripping in theatrical awards would be a good place to start...right?
Director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall (fresh from her UK triumph for the much-lauded revival of Anything Goes at the Barbican) seems like an obvious person to lead what should be a glitzy, bold and brash production. Yet, there's something here that doesn't feel like she fully got to put her stamp on, and the show does not obviously have her style in it, in a way her previous work has.
We meet Frank Sinatra (at first inexplicably) on New Year's Eve 1942, where his career is about to skyrocket, and then flashback to his engagement to Nancy Barbato, and then (rather confusingly) continue on beyond this as the point of flashback and further into Frank's life.
The cause of the confusion, ultimately, is the show's book by Joe DiPietro, which does have a lot of issues. Whilst in theory following a rather conventional theatre biopic structure, the way the piece flashes back, and then moves on past the point it started at without any explanation of where we are in time (along with very little changes in the stylings of the actors) is the first of many difficulties.
There are plenty of scenes in Sinatra that are slow but short, stopping the pace dead in its tracks whilst the (admittedly rather effective) set by Peter McKintosh continues to roll in and out (rather noisily) for a number of scenes that could fairly easily be re-written so that they all take place together as one scene (as opposed to the three that are there now), and remove the need for scene change after scene change.
To be blunt, the show is currently (at least) fifteen minutes too long, so if it is to have a future life, streamlining of the story and the merging of scenes together will help everything feel like it flows better, rather than the stop/start nature that the narrative suffers from now.
As the man himself, Matt Doyle brings the necessary charm to Sinatra, in a part that sees him basically only leave the stage to quickly change into another costume and walk back on to the next scene (more on this in a moment.) His amiable voice moves through the songs without ever trying to do much of a caricature, but the structure of the piece only enables Doyle to really let go at the end of each act (That's Life at the end of Act 1 being the real true moment where Doyle is able to let loose vocally).
As his suffering wife Nancy, Phoebe Panaretos feels like she takes time to warm up, although hits her stride towards the end of Act 1, and Broadway star Ana Villafañe does fine work as Ava Gardner - though neither feel like they perform to their fullest potential due to the issues
The overwhelming feeling here actually is answered by the show itself, in their mentioning of Sinatra's reinventing of the concept album. Sinatra, as a piece of theatre, is promoting itself as 'performing more than 25 of Frank's most famous hits' - and this isn't a good thing.
The show would actually have been more effective if it was looked at in the style of a concept album (or in the vein of a concept musical like Sondheim's Company), with some dialogue in-between the huge back catalogue of songs, as opposed to the book that is (rather sloppily) inserted around them by DiPietro.
That's not to say there's not a lot to like in this production.
The golden hits of Sinatra's career are expertly played by a luscious orchestra of 17 (who are gloriously on show at various moments in the show), and getting to hear that songbook sung as well as Doyle can, backed by as full an orchestra as there is, is a real treat.
So, the question still stands: is this a successful musical?
For the audience at the Birmingham Rep on an autumnal Saturday matinee, it certainly seemed to be. But for anyone who looks at a musical and wants an ounce of depth, and characters that feel fleshed out and real, there's definitely some work to do here still if there is to be a commercial future life.
⭐⭐⭐
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