Sinatra Raw – Hospital Club and Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Picture: Richard Barlow

Sinatra Raw is at The Frankenstein Pub, Edinburgh from 3-27 August 2018 (reviewed at The Hospital Club, London).

Star rating: three stars ★ ★ ★ ✩ ✩

Officially, Frank Sinatra retired from singing in 1971, with a celebratory concert at the Hollywood Bowl. He would go on to perform many times after that – but Richard Shelton’s play focuses on the Sinatra of a few weeks before that concert, as the 55-year-old prepares to quit from performing for the first time.

Presented as a gig at the Purple Room Palm Springs, a regular haunt for Sinatra and his friends who Lauren Bacall would christen the “Rat Pack”, long-time Sinatra impersonator Shelton presents a series of songs and anecdotes, delivered in character throughout.

Shelton has built up a reputation as a remarkable mimic of Ol’ Blue Eyes’s vocal stylings when singing, and that ability is much in evidence here. From the opening number of ‘All Or Nothing At All’ and throughout, it is clear that Shelton understands not only what Sinatra did to make his song delivery so unique, but how and why.

But this is no hagiographic tribute act. During the interludes between songs, Shelton’s monologues expose a darker heart within the singer and actor: a determined figure, to be sure, but one who could also be callous, vindictive and ruthless.

Decades-old grudges remain alive, Sinatra’s targets ranging from dismissive talent agents to former Rat Packer Peter Lawford, whose biggest crime was marrying into the Kennedy family as the President and brother Robert, the attorney general, distanced themselves from the crooner with the mob connections.

But perhaps the most intriguing part of Sinatra’s story which Shelton attempts to illuminate is also the most ill-served by his structure. The actor and singer had a long-term affair with actress Ava Gardner while still married to first wife Nancy. Although the couple eventually married – and Gardner helped Sinatra secure the role in From Here to Eternity which would both revive his film career and win him an Academy Award – the relationship remains tumultuous.

Shelton recounts the arguments, including a disastrous set visit by Sinatra to Gardner while she was filming Mogambo in Africa. When he touches on the fact that Gardner aborted Sinatra’s child, Shelton has his version of Frank at his most aggressively, petulantly, selfish, leaving one in no doubt why Gardner would have broken up with him, at the same time as wondering what could have appealed in the first place.

The culmination of Gardner’s presence in the narrative of Sinatra Raw occurs roughly halfway through Shelton’s one-hour show, as the actor recounts a 1970 London charity performance where Sinatra donated the best seats in the house to his ex-wife, who then failed to show.

Given that the events recounted occurred mere weeks before the setting for Shelton’s play, it feels like that event ought to instead to be nearer the end. Using Sinatra’s relationship with Gardner to frame the hour would afford his character a narrative arc that this style of structured cabaret sorely needs. Without it, one leaves feeling a sense of superlative cabaret tainted by opportunities missed.

Scott Matthewman