Great songs don’t save shallow musical bio

Aldwych Theatre

The critics liked the music in Sinatra The Musical but were not so keen on the book. They mostly felt Joel Harper-Jackson sounded the part but didn’t look it.

3 stars ⭑⭑⭑

Marianka Swain for The Telegraph called it ‘a turbulent experience, boasting more than 20 Sinatra hits and sleek, glossy staging, but is let down by poor writing that never quite gets under the legendary artist’s skin.’ She went on: ‘Thankfully, the terrific performances elevate the material. Joel Harper-Jackson is an effortlessly charismatic, if aptly obnoxious, young Sinatra, and his singing is impressively close to the real thing: soaring musicality, immaculate phrasing and soulful delivery. But it’s the formidable women who really dominate: Phoebe Panaretos’s fiercely uncompromising Nancy, Ana Villafañe’s worldly-wise Ava, Jenna Russell’s ball-busting Italian mamma, and Melissa Nettleford, as Billie Holiday, nailing the smoky torch song One for My Baby.’

Emma John for The Guardian noted: ‘the script often feels less three-dimensional than the video-assisted set design. Happily, Kathleen Marshall’s production, complete with a fine ensemble and some joyful choreography, doesn’t stint on the big hits’.

Franco Milazzo for BroadwayWorld said: ‘the emotionally vacant storyline boils down to a run-of-the-mill tale of a man haunted by his carnal desires and the women left to pick up the pieces after him (…) DiPietro has deliberately chosen to illustrate his subject from a palate based on a small but crucial period of his career. By narrowing the musical’s scope to his early years, though, the production finishes well short of the better known chapters of his life, leaving the narrative feeling frustratingly incomplete.’

The Financial Times’ Sarah Hemming articulated ‘the show’s central concern: the tensions between love, artistic integrity and fame’ but ‘We never get under the skin of these fascinating characters, or of the real human dilemmas here.’ She liked the star: ‘Harper-Jackson is vocally great: he has a sumptuous voice and soaring delivery — close your eyes, and you might imagine he was the real thing — and he suggests something of the charisma and volatility of his character. But he’s hampered by a script that never gets more than skin-deep.’

Alun Hood at WhatsOnStage sang from same songbook: ‘Dramatically inert but musically magnificent, this is a solid tribute to a singular talent’.

2 stars

Maddy Mussen for The Standard did it her way: ‘Teams of archaeologists could labour for decades without unearthing the point of this show. Lavishly mounted but lamely written and characterised, it imperfectly hammers hits from Frank Sinatra’s back catalogue into a misconceived triumph-over-adversity narrative that covers nine years of his life. Why? For whom?’ The songs prompted more questions: ‘These remain, mostly, great songs. But who wants to hear them in a rickety, partial and hagiographic stage musical that whitewashes a complicated and frankly unpleasant individual? Frankly Unpleasant: now that’s the Sinatra musical I might pay to see.’

Critics’ average rating 2.8⭑

Value rating 28 (Critics’ rating combined with typical ticket price)

Sinatra The Musical can be seen at The Aldwych until 10 April 2027. Buy tickets directly from the producers

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