''Our Sinatra,'' which features more than 50 songs associated
with the singer, is devoted to the proposition that Frank Sinatra was
more than just a voice who ''lived'' every song he sang, in the words of the
show's mastermind, Eric Comstock. During his extended and extraordinarily
prolific prime, Sinatra did more than anyone to establish the canon of
American popular standards. He was famous, observes Mr. Comstock, for rescuing
and shining a brilliant light on ''orphan songs,'' among them ''These Foolish
Things,'' ''When Your Lover Has Gone,'' and ''I've Got You Under My Skin.''
The revue, which opened on Sunday night at the Blue Angel, a theatrical
nightclub with a 1950's saloon ambience, is an elaboration of the successful
show Mr. Comstock, a suave, personable singer and pianist, and his vocal
partners, Christopher Gines and Hilary Cole, brought to the Algonquin Hotel
earlier this year. Intelligent, witty and highly musical, the show is scholarly
but not pedantic, affectionate without resorting to hyperbole.
If the show's three performers never come close to ''living'' their material
in the Sinatra manner, they make a strong case for the continuing
vitality of the intimate pop vocal tradition that he elevated to an art. Each of
the three brings different strengths to the show.
Mr. Comstock, whose fluent, unostentatious pianism lays down its solid
musical underpinnings, is an unusually insightful interpreter of lyrics who
reads them phrase by phrase with perfect enunciation and a swinging ease that
bespeak a deep understanding of the literature and of his chosen vocal genre.
Mr. Comstock's somewhat dry, chatty voice may not be especially sensuous, but
he is still capable of conveying a degree of romantic eloquence. One of the
show's high points is his beautifully articulated rendition of ''To Love and Be
Loved,'' a little-known formal ballad by Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen from
the movie ''Some Came Running.'' On a humorous note he has also unearthed a
gleefully sexist broadside (again by Cahn and Van Heusen), ''I Like to Lead When
I Dance,'' that he introduces as ''morally indefensible.''
Mr. Gines, who has a 40's matinee-idol look to match his voice, possesses the
creamy vocal tone (reminiscent of the younger Steve Lawrence) that Mr. Comstock
lacks. And his versions of ''I Fall in Love Too Easily,'' ''Ol' Man River'' and
''If You Are but a Dream'' consciously echo Sinatra's recordings from the
1940's, when the voice dripped with youthful honey.
Ms. Cole, who is swinging and aggressively sultry, has many flashy costume
changes and gives the show a dash of sex. Her medium-light voice conveys the
playful essence of ''The Tender Trap,'' and she finds enough pathos in ''I'm a
Fool to Want You,'' a song that Sinatra and Billie Holiday treated as a
towering dark night of the soul, to justify its inclusion.
Much of the show's second half is given over to what Mr. Comstock calls ''the
mother of medleys,'' in which the three singers spin out more than 30 Sinatra-identified
songs into a serio-comic mini-marathon. In the middle of it all Mr. Gines
suddenly sheds his ingenuous crooner's facade to parody a thuggish-sounding late
Sinatra extolling ''da summah wind.'' It is the perfect deflating touch
at exactly the right moment.
And speaking of the virtues of omission, the show has the good sense to leave
out the seemingly inevitable ''New York, New York.'' Its absence is another
welcome signal that ''Our Sinatra'' is not a contemplation of the
legend and the ego that built that legend but a celebration of what really
matters about Sinatra: the music.
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Eric Comstock, Hilary Kole and Christopher Gines