Sleigh bells ring-a-ding-ding

What: Christmas with the Rat Pack – Live at the Sands
When: December 7 – 18, 2011
Where: The Fox Theatre

Share on Google+

This is the season for guilty pleasures, and one of mine is that Lexus of celebrity impersonation shows, “The Rat Pack Live at the Sands”. The Christmas version is at the Fox, and if the Frank Sinatra I saw on opening night was not all that convincing, the spot-on Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. more than made up for it. The ghost of Christmas past never looked or sounded so good.

For those of you missed “The Rat Pack” when it came through town back in 2007, the show — originally produced in Great Britain as “The Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas” — cranks the Celebrity Tribute knob up to 11 by reproducing a typical mid-1960s Las Vegas appearance by the ruling triumvirate of the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and Sammy Davis Jr. The package includes a genuine twelve-piece big band of local musicians led from the piano by tour music director Dominic Barlow and a trio of powerfully talented backup performers billed as The Burelli Sisters. It’s all wrapped up with flashy period sets and lighting that evoke pre–theme park Vegas, complete with wired microphones and a fully-stocked liquor cart.

The Christmas-themed version downplays the appropriately raunchy humor of the regular “Rat Pack” show (presumably on the assumption that there will be children in the audience) and adds a raft of seasonal hits to the song list, but otherwise the glossy, retro-hipster spirit is the same.

In order for the show to work, of course, all three impersonations have to get over the disbelief-suspension threshold and let us fool ourselves into reacting as we would to the original performers. The clear leader in that regard is Mark Adams as Dean Martin — not surprising, given that he’s an Olivier Award–nominated member of the original West End cast. He sounds, moves, and even looks so much like Martin in his prime that suspension of disbelief is no longer willing — it’s inevitable.

It’s easy to dismiss celebrity impersonation, of course, but when it gets this accurate you’ve got to acknowledge that it’s just plain old good acting. The applause for Mr. Adams’s performances of Martin hits like “Ain’t That a Kick in the Head”, “Everybody Loves Somebody”, and “Volare” was hearty and deserved.

Giles Terera’s Sammy Davis Jr. is just as impressive. Another veteran of the British “Rat Pack”, he has Davis’s voice and cocky style down pat. He also moves with that experienced dancer’s grace that typified Davis — which makes it a pity that director/choreographer Mitch Sebastian hasn’t given him a solo dance number. He sings Davis classics like “Once in a Lifetime” with authority and his Christmas carol medley in the second act was truly impressive. Beginning with only a drum solo as accompaniment and building to a rousing big band finish, the number requires a performer with an ironclad sense of pitch and rhythm. The late Mr. Davis had it, and it would appear that Mr. Terera does as well.

The official Frank Sinatra for this tour is Stephen Triffitt, another West End alumnus, but difficulties with his visa have delayed his arrival in St. Louis. On opening night his place was taken by the alternate, Alex Banks. An experienced voice-over artist with his own Sinatra tribute show, Mr. Banks should have been persuasive in the role, but while he had some of Sinatra’s basic style down, he neither looked nor sounded very much like the real thing. Mr. Banks is clearly a solid performer in his own right, but I was left with the impression that he simply hadn’t yet managed to fully inhabit his role.

In the saving-the-best-for-last department, allow me to lavish some praise on Soophia Foroughi, Grace Holdstock, and Frankie Jenna, a.k.a. The Burelli Sisters. Decked out in a dazzling and constantly changing array of slinky outfits, the trio combines precisely timed showgirl dance moves with Andrews Sisters–style close vocal harmony. They’re on stage for much of the evening, sometimes on their own but more often backing up the stars. Their work so perfectly captures the style of the era, though, that “backup” hardly begins to describe it. It might be more accurate to say they’re the backbone of the show. Certainly it would be less impressive without them.

Accompanying everything was that classic big band I mentioned earlier, playing both original arrangements by music supervisor Matthew Freeman and classic charts by Nelson Riddle and Don Costa. This is the kind of group you rarely get to hear these days, with a full complement of trombones, trumpets, and saxes. The players had, I’m told, no real rehearsal with the cast, but you wouldn’t have known it from the tight, solid sound they produced.

So, dig: for a cool Yule, check out “Christmas with the Rat Pack — Live at the Sands” at The Fox through December 18. Yeah, the Chairman of the Board might not be all there, but you still get Deano, Sammy, the fabulous Burelli babes, and those swingin’ cats in the band. For more information, you may surf over to fabulousfox.com or give ‘em a ring-a-ding-ding at 314-534-1678.

Leaders of the Pack

[This is my review of The Rat Pack Live at the Sands for KDHX-FM in St. Louis]

The theatrical subgenre of celebrity impersonation has always been an odd duck. It's easy to do badly, damned difficult to do well, and gets the impersonator little respect in any case. In fact, duplicating a performer's on-stage persona in a way that will allow audience members to suspend disbelief and react as they would to the original is quite a challenge, especially when the performer in question is well represented on audio and film/video.

All of which brings us to The Rat Pack Live at the Sands. A massive hit in Great Britain for eight years now (where it's know as The Rat Pack Live from Las Vegas), the show takes celebrity impersonation to an entirely new level by reproducing a typical mid-1960s Las Vegas appearance by the ruling triumvirate of the Rat Pack: Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis, Jr. In order for the show to work, all three impersonations have to get over the disbelief suspension threshold and let us fool ourselves into reacting as we would to the original performers.

Happily for all concerned, the stars of this tour inhabit their roles so well that the resemblance is sometimes a bit eerie. Louis Hoover, a veteran of the London production, sounds so much like the middle-aged Sinatra that I'm not sure I could easily tell the difference with my eyes closed. Even with them open, he looks enough like the original to make that disbelief suspension easy. The same is true for the Sammy Davis, Jr. of David Hayes, who is also a London alumnus. He's got the voice and mannerisms down pat and is a dab hand at tap, even if he is a bit too tall for the role. Not surprisingly, both Hoover and Hayes have their own one-man shows based on impersonations of Sinatra and Davis. To quote Max Bialystok, "when you've got it, flaunt it, baby".

Nigel Casey doesn't sound all that much like the ‘60s-era Dean Martin - his voice is far too bright - but he captures Martin's trademark charm, breezy persona, and carefully choreographed Fake Drunk act to perfection. Of course, I'm something of an easy sell. I always found Martin the most entertaining of the triad. And, yes, Fake Drunk acts look painfully unenlightened these days, but there's no point in doing a show like this if you're going to try to make it conform to contemporary sensibilities.

Supporting the three stars - and contributing substantially to the success of the illusion - are a fifteen-piece big band conducted from the piano by Music Director Andy Rumble and a trio of talented performers billed as The Burelli Sisters (Claire Poyzer, Anna Carmichael, and Lucie Florentine) - a kind of combination Vegas showgirl chorus crossed with The Andrews Sisters. Their jazzy, close-harmony version of "It Don't Mean a Thing" is a highlight of the first act and their dancing enlivens the proceedings throughout the evening.

For those of us with the right set of chromosomes, their sexy costumes don't hurt, either.

That's not to say that the evening is a complete success. The inclusion of "New York, New York" near the end of the first act, complete with faux-Fosse choreography, is a curious anachronism and the closing, post-curtain call performance of "My Way", while it would have been a great moment for the real Sinatra, just seems a bit weird sung by an impersonator - especially when the announcer has just reminded us that we're seeing "Louis Hoover as Frank Sinatra". The (uncredited) announcer's organized crime jokes at the opening of each act also stuck me as a bit forced; maybe they're better in the original British.

Still, the bottom line on The Rat Pack Live at the Sands is that if you enjoy the work Frank, Sammy and Dean produced when they were alive, you'll probably be highly entertained by their doppelgangers on stage at the Fox. As the trio sings in Cahn and Van Husen's "Style" (from the classic Rat Pack film Robin and the Seven Hoods), "You've either got or you haven't got class. / How it draws the applause of the masses". These guys have definitely got it.

Be aware, however, that this is a fairly accurate reproduction of a period Vegas show, so there's plenty of adult humor throughout the evening. No, there aren't any words you can't say on the air, but sex and alcohol jokes are present in abundance, so it's not really a family event.

The Rat Pack Live at the Sands runs through October 14th [2007] at the Fox Theatre, 527 North Grand in Grand Center. Call 314-534-1678 for more information. As theatre it ain't much, but as an entertaining exercise in nostalgia, it's hard to beat.