The Rat Pack – Live From Las Vegas is still the coolest party in town. Direct from an acclaimed West End season, the Olivier Award-nominated The Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas is to tour the UK and Ireland with a very special guest star: Ella Fitzgerald!
With Stephen Triffitt as Frank Sinatra, Nigel Casey (Dean Martin) and David Hayes (Sammy Davis Jr), Nicola Emmanuelle joins the show as Ella Fitzgerald to celebrate the First Lady of Song and Queen of Jazz. Extra songs featured in this special new edition of the hit production will include Night and Day, The Lady is a Tramp, Mack the Knife and S’Wonderful, with Ella duetting with both Frank and Sammy. Joanna Walters, Amelia Adams, Rebecca Parker and Laura Darton complete the cast as The Burrelli Sisters.
At the start of the 1960s, The Rat Pack led by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. were the toast of Las Vegas. With the world’s rich and famous jetting in to see them joke around and sing some of the finest songs ever written, the guys also starred together in a series of glamorous Hollywood films, set fashion trends, rubbed shoulders with the US President, politicians and mobsters… and partied hard as the coolest cats on the planet. The Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas recreates that special time. Prepare to drift back in time to an era of glitzy nights spent on the Vegas strip in the company of three of the world’s most popular entertainers.
This spectacular production celebrates the incredible singing talent of three world-famous entertainers and performers and some of the finest music and song that has ever been recorded. Frank, Sammy and Dean are once again performing in the world-renowned Copa Room at the famous Sands Hotel, supported by the fabulous Burrelli Sisters and The Rat Pack Big Band in a critically acclaimed show that clocked up over 1,000 West End performances on its West End premiere.
Frequently imitated but never bettered, The Rat Pack – Live from Las Vegas features hit after hit, including Pack favourites The Lady is a Tramp, Mr Bojangles, That’s Amore, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, What Kind of Fool Am I?, Volare, My Way, Candyman, Everybody Loves Somebody and many, many more. If you wish you’d swung with the hardest partying pack in town, now’s your chance!
Frank Sinatra’s “Rat Pack” – not initially called that – came about from their work in Las Vegas and their Hollywood contacts. The late 1950s early 1960s “Rat Pack” era begun in Las Vegas in January 1959 when Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) and Dean Martin (1917–1995) – then performing separately at The Sands – began appearing in each other’s acts. Sinatra was singing with Tommy Dosey’s band in 1941 when he first met Sammy Davis, Jr. (1925–1990), then an aspiring dancer with The Will Mastin Trio.
They reconnected after Sammy was discharged from the US Army, and Sinatra would later help Davis in his career. By the early 1960s The Rat Pack became known for its multiple-person stage acts and The Sands, would advertise the horseplay on its massive marquee with billings such as: “Dean Martin – Maybe Frank – Maybe Sammy.” The Rat Pack “schtick” was part Vaudeville, part Hollywood, and part “bad boys”. It became a unique stage genre and vintage Las Vegas. In its day, The Rat Pack caught the national mood.
Musically and culturally, it occupied the transition period between the first surge of rock ‘n’ roll in the 1950s by the likes of Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley, and Buddy Holly – music which Sinatra initially derided – and the arrival of the Beatles in 1964. In addition to their stage act, the Rat Pack compadres also made films together – some shot in Las Vegas. Ocean’s 11 of 1960 was among the more famous of the Rat Pack films, but there were also nearly a dozen others. Through the early-1960s period, Sinatra and his Rat Pack group reigned supreme in contemporary culture; they became the “cool guys” of their generation
The show will be at The Orchard Theatre from Monday 14 – Saturday 19 May. To book tickets or for more information visit orchardtheatre.co.uk or call the Ticket Office on 01322 220000.
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