DO YOU ever get that feeling that something has been created just for you?
A film, a song, a painting, a particularly well-crafted Old Fashioned?
Well, I got the vibe watching this play, during its worldwide premiere run, no less.
I’m fascinated by Sinatra, the Rat Pack, The Godfather and that whole 60s and 70s Las Vegas milieu, my CD rack is stuffed with Ol’ Blue Eyes’ recordings and I’ve been known to murder the odd tune of his at karaoke.
So a play set in Francis Albert Sinatra’s Palm Springs compound on New Year’s Eve, 1979, with the Chairman Of The Board surrounded by the likes of Cary Grant, Tony Curtis and Liz Taylor?
Ring-a-ding-ding! as Frank himself might have said.
I came away feeling I’d been given an insight into Sinatra’s world and had learned things about the man of which I had heretofore been ignorant.
Are they real? Did they happen? This is a work of fiction but it has the tang of authenticity and, much as The Damned United is now seen by many as the true version of a particular section of Brian Clough’s career, so this could very well be taken as gospel, too.
Did Ava Gardner really suggest Frank should sit and watch On The Buses with her? I’m choosing to believe she did.
Almost a one-man show, of course Frank needs a piano player, Richard Shelton inhabits Sinatra as a man born for the role.
Which is just as while you may know him from Emmerdale, he’s made a habit of appearing as Francis over the years.
To do that convincingly you need to have a decent set of pipes and Shelton has those in abundance. Put it this way, he’s recorded an album with Frank’s old band.
I could maybe have done with a few more numbers but I’m greedy when it comes to Sinatra, and this is a play, not a musical, and Shelton is an award-winning actor who has a tight, clever script to have fun with.
You can see that in the little tics and mannerisms he deploys to give a genuinely convincing performance. Hell, I’m stealing the little flick of the hand he does after dropping some ice into his Jack Daniels.
I could have spent all evening in Richard/Frank’s company as he regaled me with anecdotes, whether real or not.
The title is ambiguous. Is it Frank’s one last shot at stardom? At making a go of things with Ava? Of Jack Daniels before, well, I won’t spoil it.
Ultimately it doesn’t matter. What does is that I have another shot at seeing this marvellous play – I’m going again next week, kiddo.
Sinatra: One Last Shot, 15:30, Le Monde Hotel – Dirty Martini Bar, August 7-30 (not 17 or 24).
https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/sinatra-one-last-shot
