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RPIB NEW HAVEN ADVOCATE
The Rat Pack is Back review
By Christopher Arnott, New Haven Advocate
February 28, 2009
If someone were to build a more conventional musical theater piece around the Rat Pack, it would involve home movies by Jerry Lewis, boozy conversations with Humphrey Bogart, leading lady roles for Lauren Bacall (who named the group: "Aah, ya look like a pack o' rats!") and Shirley Maclaine and (if you wanted to tell the story until the nostalgia tour at its bitter end) Liza Minnelli. It would also involve awkward moments like the original name of this drinking-buddy club being The Clan, and various fisticuffs and name-callings, often involving the group's fifth wheel, Peter Lawford.
But most Rat Pack revues (and there are several, this one being one of the two best-known) stick with the moment which crystallized the act-when they played the Sands Hotel at night while filming Ocean's Eleven in Las Vegas by day. Even with that handy simple template, The Rat Pack is Back, however, is by no means a strict recreation of that time and place. Instead, the voice of God opens the show by inviting Frank, Sammy, Dean and Joey down to Earth for one last go-around. This allows the boys to acknowledge that they're in New Haven (and make snide cracks about Milford). It allows them to sing post-'60s hits like "The Candy Man" and "New York, New York." It allows them to make references to Viagra, Brokeback Mountain and Britney Spears-while otherwise maintaining old-world attitudes which assume the audience won't mind them making fun of alcoholism, mental health, African-Americans and swishy gay. And apparently we don't.
The classic routine when Sammy is presented to Frank as an award statuette from the NAACP has oddly morphed into Sammy being a Barack Obama doll. No less funny, to those who aren't offended to their core. But the original Rat Pack, no less than Lenny Bruce, was about testing the limits of what constituted mainstream entertainment. What was the line, they posited, between a well-timed and rehearsed Vegas show and a bunch of pals playing public pranks on each other while drinking themselves silly? How far could they exaggerate the personas they'd been given by their fans and the gossip columnists, without becoming goonish and creepy?
As impersonators, the Rat Pack is Back cast treads a particularly fine line. They freely banter, but their songs are carefully studied and make the most of the 12-piece band behind them. When they recreate a well-documented real Rat Pack bit (Dean Martin crashing "Sam's Song") it's with studious, respectful flair. And the singing is masterful, selling the songs anew in the familiar vocal styles of the people they're trying to look like. I always cry when I hear "Mr. Bojangles" (it's that thing about his poor dog dying that gets me), but I wasn't sure I would cry at an impersonation. But I found this one (replete with bowler hat and moody lighting) more moving than, say, the rendition in Broadway's Fosse.
The Frank, Brian Duprey, was a winner on the reality show Performing As, and does a fine job of acting pissy and pretentious when not warbling with impeccable Blue Eyes inflections. The Dean (Drew Anthony) was the most propulsive performer, setting the pace and the loose tone for the whole evening (which, by the way, runs less than two hours including intermission). The Sammy, Kenny Jones, is a little tall to accept the belittling he gets from the others: When they set out a half-size stool for him, it seems to become a whole different and distasteful sort of "you're different from us", since Jones is the same exact size as Duprey's Frank. And unlike in the original Rat Pack, the addition of Joey Bishop (Mickey Joseph) can't be discounted. He's maybe the most valuable member of the troupe, doing a full stand-up routine before the others arrive and providing some surprise laughs throughout. Without him, considering how seriously aped the singing routines are, variety and fun would be seriously lacking. There wasn't a Bishop along the previous time The Rat Pack is Back played the Shubert; I'm sure he was missed. Still no need for a Peter Lawford, though.
One of the most gracious parts of the The Rat Pack is Back is how the pack parades into the lobby post-show to palaver with the common folks on their way out. I had them all sign my copy of Shawn Levy's book Rat Pack Confidential. "That's the best book on the Rat Pack," Kenny "Sammy" Jones informed me, then recommended Matt Birkbeck's Deconstructing Sammy. So I told him about the trove of Sammy Davis Jr. anecdotes in Tim & Tom, the new dual bio of Tom Dreesen (the opening act for Sammy before spending 14 years on the road with Sinatra) and Tim Reid. The others stayed more in character, cooing over my 6-year-old daughter (Joey) or signing my book with an impatient flourish while looking elsewhere (Frankie)
Wait-I brought a 6-year-old to see the Rat Pack? Yes, after a friend told me she'd brought her son when he was 7, and that all the off-color stuff went right over his head. Young Mabel dug the music and all the physical humor (wild dancing, or the aerosol mist Joey spritzes on a pissed-off Frank while he sings "A Foggy Day"), and liked it better than the Beatles tribute she'd seen at the Shubert a few weeks earlier.
The Rat Pack is Back for three more swinging Shubert shows, today (Saturday) at 2 & 8 p.m. and Sunday at 2 p.m. Does Dean pretend to drink as much at the matinees as at night? (203) 562-5666, www.shubert.com. $15-$68.
