By Hanna Rantala
LONDON, June 17 (Reuters) – Frank Sinatra’s songs and life story come to the London stage in a new West End musical the crooner’s daughter says captures the highs and lows of the man behind the myth.
“Sinatra The Musical,” which has its official opening night at the Aldwych Theatre on June 24, focuses on the singer and performer’s early years and features more than 20 of his hits, including “Come Fly With Me,” “That’s Life” and “One For My Baby.”
“Dad would say ‘Myth is always better than truth. It’s much more interesting.’ This is truth and I think it’s very interesting,” Tina Sinatra, the singer’s younger daughter and the musical’s co-producer, said in an interview on Wednesday.
The show opens with a 27-year-old Sinatra on stage at New York’s Paramount Theatre on New Year’s Eve 1942, delivering a performance that propels him to the big league. But as Sinatra’s star status soars, his relationship with his wife, Nancy, sours. The musical also looks at the impact of Sinatra’s tumultuous affair with Hollywood star Ava Gardner, whom he went on to marry, and how he salvaged his career with “the greatest comeback in showbiz history.”
“It’s the intimacy of mom and dad and Ava entering into that, their lives. It is what I knew as I matured as a child and I had a lot to say about it. They just made a mess together, the three of them,” said Tina Sinatra.
“It’s intimate and a roller coaster all at one time. And the music, of course, just enhances it all. And that was the key, that was the real purpose, to put the music into a medium we’d never touched before.”
ACTORS EMBODY FRANK, NANCY AND AVA
Joel Harper-Jackson stars as Frank Sinatra, with Phoebe Panaretos taking on the role of Nancy and Ana Villafañe portraying Gardner.
“It’s a very human story,” said Harper-Jackson. “You see his flaws, and the permission that Tina has given allows us to not sugar-coat anything, which is very refreshing.”
The musical is written by two-time Tony Award winner Joe DiPietro and has triple Tony-winning director and choreographer Kathleen Marshall at the helm. It features a 17-piece orchestra.
“We want audiences to walk out of the theatre not only singing the songs and humming along and going on Spotify and listening to that favourite Frank song again and again, but also having learned something and having been surprised,” said Villafañe.
“It’s also passing the baton,” added Panaretos. “I heard people on the Tube the other night saying, ‘we have to bring the kids’ and I thought, ‘We’ve done our job.'”
Sinatra, whose instantly recognisable voice won him fans around the world with classics like “My Way” and “Strangers in the Night,” died in 1998.
(Reporting by Hanna Rantala in London; Editing by Matthew Lewis)
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