My Way

Kevin Early, Tami Tappan Damiano, Damon Kirsche, Nikki Crawford

" 'My Way' singers and quintet glide from smoky to sparkling in a show of Sinatra tunes. Brimming with wit and sophistication... Rather than attempt to imitate Sinatra, the show sets out to re-create the late-night, bourbon-soaked, cigarette-hazed hipness that his singing evokes… the program — presented by McCoy Rigby Entertainment — tips its hat to a bygone era, while serving as a showcase for several popular Southland musical theater artists: director Nick DeGruccio and singer-actors Nikki Crawford, Tami Tappan Damiano, Kevin Earley and Damon Kirsche." - LA Times - Daryl Miller

" Directed by musical theater veteran Nick DeGruccio with choreography by Dan Mojica, MY WAY is a treat for Frankie fans, young and young at heart. For those who don't care about the once King of the Ratpack, after an experience with this show, one will most likely change their mind. It's fun, it's musical, and it's all-the-way Frank! Who could ask for more?? Ring-A-Ding-Ding!!" - Live Off-Line

" ...you really have to tip your fedora to director Nick DeGruccio and company." - Orange County Register

" Cigarette smoke and highball glasses are the order of the day, as one is transported to that era of post-war cool of Vegas' early days.... The performing ensemble collected by director Nick DeGruccio make the songs their own, either individually or collectively. It's a good choice, which brings to each tune a newness and vitality which has younger hearers perking up to listen even as those more familiar with the works sigh with remembered pleasures. The celebration's focus remains resolutely on the songs the man chose to sing, for that remains his true legacy. Romantic and nostalgic, warm and wry, the show celebrates the music which defined an era, and the man who provided the soundtrack for a generation." - San Gabriel Tribune

What comes through loud and clear in "My Way," Welk Resort Theatre's smoothly staged and well-sung tribute to Frank Sinatra, is just how good Ol' Blue Eyes was at picking his songs.

During his half-century career, Sinatra recorded more than 1,300 songs and the cream of the crop ---- 58 of his best ---- are performed with style, grace and a bit of a wink in this 80-minute musical revue.

"My Way" doesn't attempt to re-create Sinatra's eclectic vocal phrasing, his ultra-cool personality or his swingin' stage presence. Director Nick DeGruccio knows any imitator would pale by comparison. Instead, "My Way" features a talented ensemble of two men and two women who reinterpret and breathe new life into Sinatra's most-beloved songs, from "That Old Black Magic" to "Young at Heart" to "Fly Me to the Moon."

Set in a glitzy Vegas-style cabaret ---- frozen in time by set designer Andrew Hammer around 1960 ---- "My Way" breaks the fourth wall and has the four-member cast singing to and addressing both the audience and each other. The only dialogue is a few bits of trivia and observations about the Hoboken-born singer, such as Duke Ellington's quote that Sinatra was "the ultimate theater" and a pundit's humorous observation that half of the U.S. population over age 40 was conceived to Sinatra songs.

Audience members of all ages will recognizes many, if not most, of the songs in "My Way." With songwriters like Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Sammy Cahn, Irving Berlin and Harold Arlen, it's hard to go wrong, but it took Sinatra to make them standards. The songs are clustered in sections such as city tributes ("New York, New York" and "Chicago"), love and cheatin' songs ("The Tender Trap," "Love and Marriage" and "The Lady is a Tramp") drinking songs ("One for My Baby" and "Drinking Again") and his famous concept albums.

Although the singers take their performances seriously, there's a tongue-in-cheek element to the show. After all, Sinatra's '50s-hip lingo is laughable today (like his famous quip to Playboy magazine in 1962: "An audience is like a broad, if you're indifferent, endsville."). Yet while his creakier lines and oddball songs (1953's "Lean Baby," for example) are delivered with a smile, there's always reverence for what Sinatra achieved.

The four-member cast of Kevin Earley, Tami Tappan Damiano, Damon Kirsche and Katy Blake split the numbers evenly and each brings a different dimension to the show.

Earley leads the festivities, performing songs with gusto and humor. He stops the show with a robust rendering of "That's Life" and has fun with "One For My Baby (and One More for the Road)." Damiano is the show's most soulful interpreter with melting performances of "Guess I'll Hang My Teardrops Out to Dry" and "When Somebody Loves You."

Kirsche has the most dramatic voice in the cast and uses it to great effect in "I'm Gonna Live Til I Die" and the swinging "Witchcraft." And Blake is the jazzy belter, tossing off "The Best is Yet to Come" and the touching "I'll Be Seeing You" with ease.

From the piano, Welk music director Justin Gray skillfully leads an onstage four-piece combo and the jazzy score shows off his keyboard skills far more than the theater's usual musical theater fare. DeGruccio's direction is breezy and light, so there's never a dull moment in the intermissionless show, and the arrangements ---- which turn traditional solo ballads into duets and even quartets (like "The Way You Look Tonight" and "My Way") ---- keep the show interesting.

"My Way" will most appeal to Welk's traditional audience of seniors who grew up on Sinatra's music, but it can be appreciated by music-lovers of all ages. Sinatra knew how to deliver a song better than just about anybody, but he also knew how to pick 'em, and some of the best songs of the 20th century are presented with grace and style in "My Way."