Tharp delivers libido-charged Sinatra love letter

[March 26, 2010]  NEW YORK (AP) -- The super-cool song stylings of Frank Sinatra have been given an additional layer of sexiness in "Come Fly Away," Twyla Tharp's libido-charged love letter to romance, not to mention the man and his music.

Tharp's lively dance extravaganza, which opened Thursday at Broadway's Marquis Theatre, may be short on plot but it makes up in motion what it lacks in story, ostensibly the tale of four couples as they go through various stages in often tempestuous relationships.

What the director-choreographer has done is take Sinatra renditions of classics from the Great American Songbook, put his original vocals on stage and backed them up with an orchestra of sterling musicians and a female singer (a smooth-sounding Hilary Gardner). Among the standards heard: "You Make Me Feel So Young," "Nice 'n' Easy," "One for My Baby" and "Fly Me to the Moon."

There's an intense physicality to Tharp's choreography, not to mention a delight in show-biz razzle-dazzle, and both qualities are present in the dancers whose affairs of the heart are examined with astonishing theatricality.

The eight marvelous leads all have distinct personalities. Right from the start, you know they are performers to be reckoned with as they take to the floor in a swank nightclub setting designed by James Youmans.

Let's start with the flashiest -- the power pairing of a virile Keith Roberts and Karine Plantadit, a temptress of dazzling virtuosity. Their numbers generate considerable heat, especially a volatile "That's Life" that has Roberts and Plantadit engaged in an almost brutal display of sexual frenzy.

Sexuality of a more calculated kind is found in the seductive presence of the striking red-haired Holley Farmer, whose teasing of John Selya is equally provocative if a bit more genteel. Farmer is a commanding dancer, displaying a crisp, cool assurance as she goes after the man she wants.

Selya displays a charming, been-around-the-block world weariness that invests his character with a bit of poignancy, a quality that is accentuated in his solo turn with "The September of My Years." The Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen song, apparently first recorded by Sinatra as he approached his 50th birthday, suggests the inevitability of life moving beyond youthful exuberance.

That exuberance is supplied by the delightful comic shenanigans of Charlie Neshyba-Hodges, playing a lowly club employee, and Laura Mead, the evening's nominal ingenue. Their duets are the entertainment's most airborne, with Neshyba-Hodges delivering a gymnastic series of turns that seem to take flight and Mead his delicious foil, a young lady who brings him crashing back to Earth.

Matthew Stockwell Dibble, a former member of Great Britain's Royal Ballet, brings a classical elegance to the proceedings, especially in a duet with Rika Okamoto, performed to the sultry, hypnotic melodic musings of Antonio Carlos Jobim's "Wave."

Tharp has worked with iconic music before on Broadway -- celebrating Billy Joel in the long-running "Movin' Out" and then stumbling with the Bob Dylan-inspired "The Times They Are A-Changin'." And she's worked with Sinatra songs before, too, in several of her ballets.

But in "Come Fly Away," originally seen last year at Atlanta's Alliance Theatre, she has listened to a parade of genius lyricists as well. Besides Cahn, the impressive collection includes Lorenz Hart, Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Carolyn Leigh and Fred Ebb.

Their words help define the characters she has put on stage. But she and the finest company of dancers on Broadway -- plus a little help from the Chairman of the Board -- make them soar.

[Associated Press; By MICHAEL KUCHWARA]

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