Sinatra: One Last Shot continues at Dirty Martini at Le Monde until 30 August 2026 (except 24).
Star rating: five stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ★
Richard Shelton’s Sinatra: One Last Shot is a remarkably convincing portrait of Sinatra at the point when his mythology was beginning to look rather less secure, finding the singer in 1979 Palm Springs irritated by retirement, suspicious of the changing musical landscape and searching for the song that might give him one more great run.
Shelton, who returns to the role following his critically acclaimed global run in Sinatra: Raw, captures the familiar swagger, temper and humour alongside the uncertainty underneath it all.
Written and directed by Bert Tyler-Moore, best known as the creator of The Windsors, the show is played as an intimate monologue with live piano, giving Shelton plenty of room to make Sinatra feel less like an icon being impersonated and more like a man caught in private.
The central dramatic moment is Sinatra’s encounter with ‘Theme from New York, New York’, a song John Kander and Fred Ebb (Cabaret, Chicago) had written for Liza Minnelli, but which Sinatra eventually made unmistakably his own. Sinatra finally recorded the track in 1979 – he had thought it was Minnelli’s song but the legendary Ebb persuaded him otherwise.
Shelton understands that this was not simply another Sinatra standard but rather marked the moment when an ageing performer recognised the possibility of a final reinvention. The performance of the song successfully becomes both a musical climax and a character revelation.
Patrick Honoré
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