Sinatra Musical Opens in West End, Critics Split on
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- Sinatra: The Musical has opened in London's West End after premiering in Birmingham three years ago and subsequent workshops, with its premise centered on Frank Sinatra's late-1940s to early-1950s career nadir.
- Joel Harper-Jackson stars in the lead, marrying smooth vocal power to Sinatra's signature swagger — the head wobble and corner-of-mouth smirk — including a bed-hopping "Come Fly With Me" featuring Lana Turner, Judy Garland, and Marlene Dietrich.
- Joe DiPietro's book never spirits up the tumult of the Sinatra-Ava Gardner affair, which allegedly ended its first date in drunken gunplay, reducing the febrile relationship to a ceremonious smashing of whisky glasses in a grate.
- Ana Villafañe plays Ava Gardner with bombshell power while Phoebe Panaretos plays Nancy, and Jenna Russell as Sinatra's Italian mother can steal a scene with a single line delivered on a telephone.
- Tina Sinatra, Frank's producer daughter, helped shape the story wanting her father to be better understood, but the script's reluctance to embrace darkness lends a sense that things just happen to the hero rather than stemming from his stubbornness.
- Kathleen Marshall's production delivers a fine ensemble and joyful choreography, addresses Sinatra's progressive values and the anti-immigrant discrimination that drove him, and prompted audible swooning from the audience on opening night.
Why it matters: For West End audiences and Sinatra fans, the review signals a spectacle heavy on hits and swagger but light on the psychological complexity a bio-musical demands. With Tina Sinatra onboard as producer, expectations for insider insight into her father's contradictions went unmet, leaving the most explosive chapter of his life — the Gardner affair — dramatically defanged.
