Gaslight Dinner Theatre pays tribute to Sinatra with My Way
Release Date: 3/23/2005. Expired: 5/7/2005
For more than five decades, Frank Sinatra has been an entertainment icon, recording almost 1,400 songs, appearing in over 60 movies and television shows, winning 10 Grammys and an Oscar. His music has become a big part of the soundtrack of American pop culture for the latter half of the 20th century.
Sinatra’s storied career is brought to life in My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra, being presented in the Gaslight Dinner Theatre at The Renaissance Center in Dickson April 8-May 7. Shows are Fridays and Saturdays beginning with a buffet meal at 6:30 p.m. and the show at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are $27 per person and include dinner, drink, dessert and a professional production.
Tickets for the center’s popular Senior Matinees sold out the day tickets went on sale. Additional matinee dates were added April 13 and 20 and also sold out.
Created by David Grapes and Todd Olson, My Way is a musical revue that features more than 50 of Sinatra’s greatest songs. Two men and two women meet in a nightclub and over the course of two hours pay tribute to the man known as the Chairman of the Board through his music.
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“This show is about the musical legacy left by one of America’s greatest entertainers,” said Pacer Harp, managing director of the Gaslight Dinner Theatre and director of My Way. “These are not Sinatra impersonations, but rather a tribute to the man and his music by four wonderful vocalists and actors.”
My Way made its world premiere at the Tennessee Repertory Theatre in Nashville in July 2000 where Grapes was executive producing director. He and Olson began working on My Way shortly after hearing of Sinatra’s death in 1998.
“In the days after May 14, 1998, my friend and theatrical collaborator Todd Olson and I did what most Americans did: we watched the multitude of tributes to the recently departed Frank Sinatra,” Grapes says in his program notes. “During the entire week, his old TV concerts, interviews and films filled nearly every available television channel. I knew that I had to create a theatrical piece about this man.
“I was always taken by his ease, his, albeit a cliché, ‘cool,’ his remarkable way with a simple lyric, his charisma and the epic and in-your-face way that he chose to live his life. But how could that be translated into an evening of theatre? The solution was obvious: the key was in the music. After some quick research, Todd and I were amazed to learn that the man had recorded nearly 1,400 songs. The next thing I knew, Todd and I were working on My Way.”
The show follows the two couples as they flirt and get to know each other through more than 50 Sinatra standards. Songs include All of Me, The Best is Yet to Come, Chicago, Fly Me to the Moon, High Hopes, I Get a Kick Out of You, I’ve Got You Under My Skin, The Lady Is a Tramp, Love and Marriage, Makin’ Whoopee, My Funny Valentine, New York, New York, Strangers in the Night, Summer Wind, That Old Black Magic, That’s Life, The Way You Look Tonight and, of course, his signature hit My Way, among many others.
Sinatra scored dozens of top-10 hits, beginning with I’ll Never Smile Again with the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra in 1940. His last number-one song came in 1967 when he recorded the duet Something Stupid with daughter Nancy.
He earned 10 Grammy Awards, including Best Album Cover at the very first awards ceremony in 1958. He won Male Vocal Performance of the Year in 1959 (Come Dance With Me), 1965 (It Was a Very Good Year) and 1966 (Strangers in the Night). Album of the Year awards were picked up for Come Dance With Me (1959), September of My Years (1965) and Sinatra: A Man and His Music (1966), which produced Record of the Year for Strangers in the Night, as well. Sinatra also picked up a Best Soundtrack Grammy in 1960 for Cole Porter’s Can Can and won his final Grammy in 1995 for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Performance for Duets II, the second of two albums on which Sinatra re-recorded many of his hits with contemporary music stars.
“Frank Sinatra’s music has reached beyond just the generations who listened to his records the first time around,” said Harp. “His songs have been recorded over and over again by artists of every genre of music and will continue to be part of popular music for decades to come. But it will always been his versions that every recording is compared against. Imitators come and go, but there will never be another Sinatra.”
For more information on the Gaslight Dinner Theatre’s production of My Way: A Musical Tribute to Frank Sinatra, call (615)740-5600. To purchase tickets, call (615)740-5570.
The Renaissance Center is an arts and technology education and performing arts center at 855 Highway 46 South in Dickson, just 35 miles west of Nashville on Interstate 40 at exit 172.
Visit the Theatre page for more about community and professional theatre.
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