‘Sinatra The Musical’ To Open In England
A new musical based on the life and music of Hoboken’s Frank Sinatra will open at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre in Great Britain on September 23 with 20 actors and 17 musicians performing 26 Sinatra classics. Matt Doyle will star. (“I have no doubt my Italian grandmothers would be profoundly overjoyed.”)
Tina Sinatra: “It’s the first musical to take an honest look at my father’s life. From the moment Matt Doyle swaggered into the audition room, he owned the role.”
Doyle won the 2022 “Best Featured Actor in a Musical” Tony Award for his performance as Jamie in Sondheim’s Company. He also starred in The Book Of Mormon, Spring Awakening, War Horse and the Bye Bye Birdie revival.
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The show starts in 1942 when a skinny kid steps on to the stage of the Paramount Theater in New York City. Screaming ensues. Before Elvis, before The Beatles, no one in the history of music elicited such response. They were called “Bobbysoxers.” They filled the cheap seats and screamed their hearts out for him. (My mom was one of them.) The sudden eruption of superstardom was hard to fathom for Sinatra. He struggles maintaining his marriage in the face of constant attention. He cheats on his wife with actress Ava Gardner. But then the records stop selling. The press turns against him. His career goes into a tailspin. With the true grit of his earlier self, the street tough who had to use his wits to offset his diminutive physical stature, he fights and claws his way back to the top.
Joe DiPietro is the man responsible for the plot. “Growing up,” the writer says, “there were two pictures hanging in my grandmother’s kitchen: The Pope and Frank Sinatra. So to sit down with Tina Sinatra and hear stories of her father which no one else knows, and then to be able to put those stories on the stage, well, I think it will make for an unexpected and thrilling new musical.”
Can Broadway be far behind?