"What kind of show is it?" a passing actor asked as I hurtled out of the Palladium. Not an easy question to answer. Seen in an earlier version at Radio City Music Hall, this weird extravaganza creates a new category: what you might call glitzy necrophilia, that uses all the resources of technology to summon up the dead.
On stage, any number of things happen simultaneously. We get beautifully restored archive footage of Sinatra singing standards from the superb I've Got You Under My Skin to the execrable My Way. We also get a team of lithe dancers offering Stephen Mear's choreographic interpretation of the numbers. On top of that we have Gareth Valentine, in black jacket with cutaway crimson lining, conducting a brassy 24-piece band. As if that were not enough, we also get film evoking the pageant of American life from the forties to Sinatra's death in 1998.
The one thing we don't get from Bill Zehme's exiguous narrative is much sense of Sinatra the man. In so far as the show has any tone at all, it is one of grovelling hagiography. We hear of Sinatra's ardent devotion to Ava Gardner, see him romping with the family in home movies, and even get a choice still of a pipe-smoking figure consulting his extensive library. But Sinatra's friendship with hoodlums is glossed over. And there is no attempt to explore the contradictions of a man who combined acts of charity with an ability to freeze out old friends, intimidate colleagues and pimp for a president.
The real problem with the show, however, is that there is too much competing visual information and sometimes a bathetic tastelessness. It seems particularly gruesome to accompany iconic shots of the JFK motorcade in Dallas with Sinatra singing Send In The Clowns. Did no one listen to lyrics which contain the lines "me on the ground, you in mid-air"? And, for all the kaleidoscopic energy of David Leveaux's production, it is difficult to focus on Sinatra when the stage is filled with whirling dancers. In fact, it is Mear's choreography that provides the one moment of genuine ecstasy. That comes in a number called Hawaiian War Chant, which evokes the era of bobby-soxers, beebop and delectably sweatered girls who pull the eyes over the wool. And so good are the toe-twirlers you almost wish the stage could be cleared to allow them to interpret the songs, rather in the manner of Bob Fosse's Terpsichorean revue, Dancin'. But the ultimate impression is of a hollow spectacle that includes ample footage of Sinatra, but leaves him as much a mystery as ever.
· Until October 8. Box office: 0870 890 1108.
