Ladies and gentleman, welcome to the world-famous Sands Hotel/Casino, home of Sammy, Dean and Frank — the Rat Pack!
Tonight, the guys welcome to the stage the not-yet-world-famous Tucson Symphony Orchestra. Now take your seats, sit back and enjoy the show.
The Tucson Music Hall is not the Sands Hotel, but it may feel like it tonight during "The Rat Pack — A Symphonic Celebration," a tribute show that borrows from the legendary trio's days of playing with orchestras.
This is a show that goes beyond impersonating American entertainment icons who left an indelible legacy.
It's a trip back in time, to a bygone era when entertainers gussied up in tuxedos and cumberbunds, told tastefully tacky jokes, poked fun at one another and sang some of the richest songs ever written: "My Way," "Mr. Bojangles," "That's Amore," "New York, New York," "That Old Black Magic," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Fly Me to the Moon/Come Fly With Me," "The Way You Look Tonight" and "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You."
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"There's a whole generation of audience out there that never got to see the Rat Pack perform," said Grace Warren of Broadway Pops International, the show's creator. "These guys are icons, and certainly since they have all passed on, there is an audience of young professionals that just love this."
About 18 months ago, Broadway Pops International teamed Nat Chandler (Dean Martin), Eric Jordan Young (Sammy Davis Jr.) and Sal Viviano (Frank Sinatra) for the show, which premiered last September with the Arkansas Symphony Orchestra in Little Rock. It follows in the footsteps of other successful symphonic tribute shows including "Beatlemania," which has sold out both times it played with the TSO in recent years.
Chandler and Viviano have done similar shows backed by an orchestra. Young, who created a one-man show, "Sammy and Me," and has appeared on Broadway as Billy Flynn in the long-running "Chicago," had never played with an orchestra until the Little Rock concert.
Sal Viviano (Frank Sinatra)
"You get not only the choice of all the great songs that these guys popularized and made famous, but you also get a sense in our show of a typical evening at the Sands Hotel, where they would have their routines, a lot of great humor, a lot of great ribbing and all of the style of what they would have done back then in the 1960s. With the symphonic audiences, the pops audiences especially, you have the right target audience for that style of music. They all know every song and they can probably sing every lyric with us, although we ask them not to."
Nat Chandler (Dean Martin)
"There is a lot of shows that do impersonations. This is not our goal. Our goal is to respectfully do a tribute to those great talents and bring back an atmosphere of those days at the Sands Hotel, that '60s retro feeling, cumberbunds and everything else."
Eric Jordan Young (Sammy Davis Jr.)
"Playing Sammy Davis Jr. is always a daunting task. He has the title of 'World's Greatest Entertainer.' . . . I get the opportunity to see how many people actually loved him."
Associated Press 1978 Dean Martin, left, Sammy Davis Jr. and Frank Sinatra at a Rat Pack fund-raising reunion show in Santa Monica, Calif., May 22, 1978, to benefit a charity.
Preview
The Rat Pack — A Symphonic Celebration.
• With the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, with guest conductor Lawrence Golan, Phoenix Symphony's resident conductor.
• Featuring Sal Viviano (Frank Sinatra), Nat Chandler (Dean Martin) and Eric Jordan Young (Sammy Davis Jr.).
• When: 7:30 p.m. today and Saturday, 2 p.m. Sunday.
• Where: Tucson Music Hall, 260 S. Church Ave., Downtown.
• Tickets: $21-$53 through the TSO box office, 882-8585, or online at www.tucsonsymphony.org.
• Program includes such Rat Pack gems as "That Old Black Magic," "The Lady Is a Tramp," "Fly Me to the Moon/Come Fly With Me," "The Way You Look Tonight," "That's Amore," "You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You" and "New York, New York."
