The Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas – Theatre Royal Haymarket

Nicola Emmanuelle in The Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas at the Theatre Royal Haymarket and Touring. Picture: Betty Zapata

The Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas continues at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London until 3 February, then tours the UK until 12 May.

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Mitch Sebastian’s The Rat Pack – Live from Vegas is one of those Ronseal musicals – you get exactly what it says on the tin.

Currently revived at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, it’s a jukebox tribute show that re-creates one (fictional) night in 1960 at the Sands Hotel in Vegas when Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr and Dean Martin share top billing.

Backed by a 12-piece band, the Ocean’s Eleven stars run through the highlights of their back catalogue, and in this most recent version, they’re joined by Ella Fitzgerald. What a night of music that would’ve been!

I didn’t get the chance to see the original production, let alone witness any of the actual Rat Pack live, so with nothing to compare it with, I entered the Theatre Royal with an open-ish mind. (Open-ish because I must admit to rarely liking jukebox shows – of late, perhaps only Girl From the North Country being bearable.) But I was pleasantly surprised and found myself enjoying nearly every minute of this two-a-bit-hour show.

For one, the band – led by pianist MD Matthew Freeman – is phenomenal. Beautifully balanced, this 12-piece ensemble (16 parts with doubling) explodes with energy and more than does justice to the classic numbers. Trilbys off to the three-part lips-of-steel trumpet section – a fantastic wall of sound.

I also enjoyed the three leads, with a few reservations. It’s an alternating cast, with seven performers billed for this London show and its UK tour – Garrett Phillips, Stephen Rashbrook and Stephen Triffitt as Sinatra; David Hayes and Ashley Campbell as Davis Jr; and Nigel Casey and Keiron Crook as Martin – and on my visit, I had Phillips, Hayes and Crook.

Of the three, Phillips was by far the standout performer. A dead-ringer for Sinatra – complete with his mannerisms and louche coolness – the County Galway lookalike also sounds uncannily like him. I found his performance quite mesmerising, and when he wasn’t on the stage, he was missed.

Crook was charming as Dean Martin and certainly had no issues vocally, his tone Bourbon smooth. A better actor than Phillips, he tackled the (sometimes painfully flat) banter between songs well and was genuinely funny.

Casey pulled off the look – and the comic charisma – of Sammy Davis Jr perfectly but struggled to nail the performer’s twinkle-toed lightness in the choreography. His singing voice was also lacking at times, although his rendition of ‘Mr Bojangles’ was impeccable and one of the highlights of the night.

Supporting the fellas were the (fictional) Burrelli Sisters: Amelia Adams-Pearce, Rebecca Parker and Joanna Walters. All three did a nice job adding colour and movement – token gestures, perhaps, but necessary for bringing the show to life and avoiding the whole thing turning into a night of just top-end karaoke.

The best part of the show, by far, however, was Nicola Emmanuelle as Ella Fitzgerald.

Her re-creation of the first lady of jazz was flawless: she looked like her and, crucially, sounded like her. That immaculate bell-like tone and unmistakable fast vibrato was there, and her scat singing was a thing of wonder. Her duet with Phillips on ‘The Lady is a Tramp’ was blissful – you could close your eyes and the pair were right there in front of you.

Sadly, she was only on stage for a fraction of the show. We could have done with a lot more of Ella, and I’d’ve happily sacrificed some of the at-times excruciating banter for a song or two more.

Ultimately, there’s absolutely nothing in The Rack Pack Live that challenges you as an audience member – it’s no Lady Day at Emerson’s Bar and Grill (actually, another jukebox show that I really enjoyed). However, maybe this is a good thing if you’re looking to escape your mundane day with an evening of classic song after classic song, backed by the best and swingiest big band in town.

Yes, it’s a dinosaur of a show, but it’s a charming, light-hearted and gloriously brain-dead re-creation of a simpler time in our history.

I would’ve liked it even more in an intimate cabaret setting (the Matcham Room at the Hippodrome would have been perfect), but economies of scale dictate a show of this scale needing a larger house. The Theatre Royal is hardly Vegas but if you open your mind and shut your eyes, you may well be transported…

Craig Glenday

Tickets for The Rat Pack – Live From Las Vegas are available HERE.