By Kristi Casey Sanders
It’s been more than 40 years since the Rat Pack – Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. – shared the stage for a legendary two-week engagement at Las Vegas’ Sands Hotel in 1960, but theatergoers can experience what it was like at this month’s The Rat Pack – Live at the Sands.
“Basically, it’s all true, but it never really happened,” says British director/choreographer Mitch Sebastian, who created the show in 2003. “They are all moments the Rat Pack experienced put together in one evening.”
Sebastian, a successful West End performer, was directing and choreographing concerts for performers around the world when London producers commissioned him to create a Rat Pack concert. Hired for his technical skill, Sebastian had to do a lot of research before he felt he was up to the job. “I didn’t really know anything about them,” Sebastian remembers. “I was too young for them, and more importantly, my parents were too young for them … so that music was never in the house.”
After reading several books and familiarizing himself with the Rat Pack, Sebastian says he realized he had an amazing opportunity. “There was a great backstory with these three men. And there was this bizarre twist in all of their careers. Dean Martin had just gone single – he had split from Jerry Lewis the year before. This was Frank Sinatra’s great comeback. And Sammy was forging a pathway that had never existed before – to have his own television show and Broadway show and movies – he was creating the industry as far as African-American performers go.
“It’s amazing that the three of them had come together, and it seemed the timing was perfect,” Sebastian adds. “Vegas was just being born; they kind of put Las Vegas on the map. Every night someone like Judy Garland, Marilyn Monroe or Milton Berle was in the audience. It was the first, big hyped event worldwide. It really was on the front page of the paper in London and Paris. Every day, people would read the paper to see who was in the audience the night before. They were the most famous people in the world for that moment.”
Sebastian’s original idea for the show was to place Sammy, Dean and Frank in a hotel room together after the concert, and include musical flashbacks to the show’s highlights. “The producers said, ‘No, no, no. We don’t want that. We just want the concert,’” he says. “I’m constantly pulling for a more theatrical world to explore and they’re constantly pushing for something more commercial. And I think that conflict is what makes it a better show.”
Rat Pack Live takes the humor, stage patter, music, dance and pathos of the real entertainers, and presents it as one night of flashy, ’60s-style entertainment. “I used as much factual material as I could and directed the actions around the real backgrounds and personalities of these three men,” Sebastian says. “But there’s also this big, glossy veneer that comes around the attitudes and feelings of the time. I want people to have a good time, but also to think, ‘I’m glad we’ve moved on.’ I want to remind people that everything was not perfect. There were racial issues and political issues in America at that time.”
Segregation was something the Rat Pack defied simply by putting Sammy Davis Jr. in the show. “The fact that the three of them are together on that stage is exciting,” Sebastian says. “It was a very political statement to have Sammy up there with them. And for them to hug him and kiss him and call him brother – for many of their audience members, it was quite shocking. And they joke a lot about that, at Sammy’s expense. But Frank was absolutely against any kind of prejudice. They are mocking the racists. It was a huge period of change in America, and they certainly played their part in that.”
The larger-than-life quality of the Rat Pack personalities, the worldwide success of their music and movies, and a rebirth in the interest in swing music abroad have fueled audience enthusiasm in Europe, where The Rat Pack –Live at the Sands has played for the past several years. But watching American audiences react to the show is what excites Sebastian.
“It’s kind of like bringing sand to the Arabs … because it belongs to America,” he says. “They were an American monarchy of sorts, so Americans have a wonderful sense of pride about them. The excitement is palpable. There’s an optimism and enthusiasm for the evening, and it fuels the whole thing. It means more.”
The Rat Pack – Live at the Sands plays The Fabulous Fox Theatre Sept. 25-30.
