Frank Sinatra sings while Tharp’s dancers burn through ‘Come Fly Away’

Impressionistic dance-drama offers hot if not customary Broadway fare

BY MICHAEL SOMMERS

NEWJERSEYNEWSROOM.COM

BROADWAY REVIEW

Twyla Tharp successfully mixed Billy Joel music and dance drama in "Movin' Out." Then she struck out badly trying to do the same for Bob Dylan's catalog with "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in 2006.

Tharp now combines more than 30 songs that Frank Sinatra made famous with a two-act medley of modern dances to create "Come Fly Away," which opened Thursday at the Marquis Theatre.

Not exactly a Sinatra commemoration, "Come Fly Away" is conceiver-choreographer-director Tharp's impressionistic evocation of one hot night in a make-believe ballroom.

Perhaps this mirror ball-type entertainment will appeal more to you than me. I usually like a stronger story with my Broadway show.

There's no faulting the production's slick ways. A 19-member orchestra is arrayed across a bandstand at the back of the stage designed by James Youmans with a glossy cocktail bar and wide-open spaces left for dancing that Donald Holder often drenches in moody red and blue lighting.

The musical treatment is even more impressive. Sinatra's vocals on over two dozen typical recordings like "Witchcraft," "That's Life" and "My Way" are tracked against the live orchestra. At times Sinatra's voice croons duets with a girl singer in black velvet a-la Natalie and Nat King Cole. Conducted by pianist Russ Kassoff (who toured with Sinatra from 1980-91), the orchestra sounds fine and their match-up with the vocals is seamless.

There is no spoken text. Instead, Tharp strings out the songs to trace the rise, climax and falling away of romances occurring among a dozen people in a swanky saloon. The men sport fedoras, skinny ties and sharkskin threads. The women wear flirty dresses. And so they dance in various combinations meant to characterize their changing rivalries or seductions or heartbreaks during a dusk-to-dawn blowout.

Incidentally, by the time "Take Five" and "Makin' Whoopee" conjoin, the dancers have stripped down to very little for some sexy interplay - including a discreet taste of girl-on-girl action.

Expect not strictly ballroom or swing moves so much as Tharp's art-y interpretations of those modes. Complicated lifts and elaborate cradlings of partners, comic acrobatics and challenging dance-offs characterize the choreography. (Curiously, at times the dancers' frenetic motion goes against the grain of Sinatra's so-smooth musicianship.)

The dancers are attractive, personable and expert. Sturdy John Selya is the swinger captivated by Holley Farmer's red-headed coquette in a blue dress. A nimble Charlie Neshyba-Hodges and demure Laura Mead cavort through several cute turns. Karine Platadit is the Amazonian vamp who slays a brooding Keith Roberts and Latin lover Matthew Stockwell Dibble, among others. Their energy is high and they really heat up the joint. (An alternate cast of principals including American Ballet Theatre star Ashley Tuttle perform the Wednesday and Saturday matinees.)

Good thing they're all so hot since "Come Fly Away" otherwise registers as a rather hazy narrative hitched to Sinatra's disembodied vocals and Tharp's energetic dances. It's got flash but no heart.

"Come Fly Away" continues an open-end run at the Marquis Theatre, 1535 Broadway at 46th St., New York. Call (877) 250-2929 or visit www.comeflyaway.com.