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‘Rat Pack’ @ The Fox
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
REVIEW. “The Rat Pack: Live at the Sands”
Grade: C- 8 p.m. today-Saturday; 2 p.m. Saturday; 1 and 6:30 p.m. Sunday. $17-$55. Broadway Across America, Atlanta, Fox Theatre, 660 Peachtree St. N.E., Midtown. 404-817-8700, ticketmaster.com. Bottom line: A pack of lies. You won’t believe a word of it.
Some of us who grew up watching Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. on ’60s TV have a certain nostalgia for the Rat Pack. Frank Sinatra’s saloon singing is as legendary as Martin’s booze and women and Davis’ peacock strut.
But a vintage recording is usually enough to satisfy the thirst for that old martini-soaked rat magic. Either that or one of the “Ocean’s Eleven” flicks that keep popping up every couple of years. Just don’t make the deadly mistake of payingto see “The Rat Pack: Live at the Sands,” the limp-footed, poorly written stage approximation of the swinging Vegas lounge act that opened the 2007-08 season of Broadway Across America, Atlanta, at the Fox Theatre.
It takes a couple of terrific character actors to impersonate Sammy and Dean — and a healthy shot of charisma to do a credible impersonation of Ol’ Blue Eyes. Louis Hoover’s Sinatra has a flawless vocal style but an utterly flavorless personality. He’s dapper like Sinatra, suave like Sinatra, but he couldn’t get a laugh if his next glass of whisky depended on it.
British actor Nigel Casey captures a tad of Martin’s funnyman charm — that slurry delivery and pitch-perfect timing. (Of his mother-in-law, Martin quips: “She’s 84, and she doesn’t even need glasses. She just drinks it straight out of the bottle.”) But you’d never mistake him on the street for Dino.
Happily, David Hayes makes for a splendid Sammie Davis Jr., imbuing the ballad “Mr. Bojangles” with tenderness and poignance and scoring a knockout with his big Act 2 number, “What Kind of Fool Am I?” And yes, in those trademark nerd glasses and pencil-thin suits, he’s a dead ringer for the original. A first-rate performance.
With its predictable, occasionally offensive jokes about the Mafia, about Jews and Gentiles, about “fairies” and always, always about alcoholics, “The Rat Pack” is as stale as cigarette smoke. The 15-piece onstage orchestra sounds swank. The trio of back-up babes adds spice. But sometimes, what happens in Vegas needs to stay in Vegas.
Comments
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By Bob Heller
September 27, 2007 10:47 AM | Link to this
Don’t know what Wendell’s problems are. The show was an enjoyable evening and if there were some offensive lines, it is fair to say there some to offend everybody. Kind of like Vegas.
By Mary C
September 27, 2007 1:59 PM | Link to this
I saw the show last night and found it entertaining. The understudy, Mark Halliday, played Dean Martin and was fine. Certainly there is no plot, but the show doesn’t present that it’s anything but what it is - a flashback to a night in the 1960s in Las Vegas.