By: Brenda Bredahl
One night my friend Tikidame called—she was laid up with a broken foot and cabin fever—to say she had scored comp tickets to The Rat Pack: Live at the Sands at the Historic State Theatre in Minneapolis. The catch was I had to deposit her at the door and park by myself. If that was the price to pay, then I was in.
I unloaded Tiki and her crutches on busy Hennepin Avenue, and I secured a spot across the street. Just going to the Historic State is a trip by itself. The stately 1921 interior is a visual feast with a fairly fresh restoration (16 years old) to its elegant plaster moldings, gold leaf and velvet splendor. To imagine that it almost lost its life to urban renewal after being a Jesus People Church is darn right sacrilegious. Luckily, the city’s purchase of the crumbling block assured the theater’s glory for years to come.
Though, at first, it did seem a little incongruous see the Rat Pack in such a splendid theater. If the show would have been down the street at Murray’s steak house, I might have thought I’d died and been reincarnated to swank heaven. But with that said, the set’s staircase, Sands logo, full orchestra, eerily realistic actors and real cigarette smoke made it a nearly authentic show.
While Frank Sinatra (played by Stephen Triffitt) and Sammy Davis Jr. (David Hayes) actually seemed like the guys spookily reanimated—voice and looks—Dean Martin (Nigel Casey) looked as good as the handsome Italian but just didn’t get the silky baritone quite right. At one point, in a sketch true to the trio’s Las Vegas stage antics, Sammy spoofed one of Dino’s signature songs—“Volare,” maybe—and sounded more like the real deal than Casey.
The audience—from hipsters with coffee and rectangular glasses to octogenarians with Old Fashioneds and real fur—couldn’t help but tap their toes and nod their heads to the smooth stylings of the full orchestra—unfortunately a rare breed in popular music nowadays save for the fantastic Brian Setzer Orchestra and modern-day crooners like Harry Connick Jr. and Michael Bublé.
The frolics of Frank and company were true to the era—scantily-clad-but-beautiful-and-talented-but-ditzy backup singers as well as plenty of Black/Jewish jokes and light-in-the-loafers humor; it didn’t bother me too much because of the historical context.
I can see why the trio was such a hit with Vegas audiences during the Rat Pack heyday in the 50s and 60s. They made it look so easy—you just want to sidle up to the piano, grab a smoke, pour a drink and hang out with the guys, laugh a little, sing a lot, and fly to the moon.
Location Info:
State Theatre
Artist Info: Rat Pack: Live at the Sands
Share this story:
Article comments powered by Disqus