Frank Sinatra lands on Broadway

"Come Fly Away" — which premiered to raves last year in Atlanta — mirrors Sinatra’s breadth and depth. It takes place at a nightclub, the era purposefully obscured, as men and women couple and uncouple, swing and sway, slither and strut (and dress and undress).

Mikhail Baryshnikov has danced with — and for — some of the greatest names of the 20th century.

Yet he calls one performance, a rehearsal, really, "the memory of my life."

For Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration, he danced a piece choreographed by Twyla Tharp to Frank Sinatra’s "One For My Baby (And One More For the Road)," with Ol’ Blue Eyes himself at the microphone.

"That was something, especially during the rehearsal, late afternoon; there was just a few stagehands sitting around and just him and me, and he has his brandy and his cigarette, just sitting," Baryshnikov recalled in a 2002 interview. "And I was dancing. And I looked around and all these men, tough cookies, they’re really crying."

Tharp had mined Sinatra three times by that point, for a one-off duet she danced with Baryshnikov at a 1976 gala, for the romantic "Nine Sinatra Songs" in 1982 and for the bittersweet "Sinatra Suite" in 1984. Sinatra’s lustrous tone, his supple vocal punctuation and the humanity that poured through the microphone — well, the critic Clive Barnes observed in 1987, "I suspect almost anyone...could have a hit with a Sinatra ballet."

All signs indicate that Tharp has that hit in "Come Fly Away," an almost wordless Broadway production that opens Thursday at the Marquis Theatre. The show, now in previews, plays off the kid from Hoboken’s many guises — the tender crooner of the ’40s and early ’50s (when Time magazine dubbed him "the boudoir johnny with the lotion tones"), the strutting playboy of the Rat Pack years, the reflective, all-too-human aging artist of the late ’60s and ’70s.

And the action in "Come Fly Away" — which premiered to raves last year in Atlanta — mirrors Sinatra’s breadth and depth. It takes place at a nightclub, the era purposefully obscured, as men and women couple and uncouple, swing and sway, slither and strut (and dress and undress).

"Sinatra sounds like nobody else," says Charles Pignone, who traveled with Sinatra during the last decade he toured and who produced several Sinatra albums and archived his material. "The voice had such courage and reassurance; it touches and moves people like no one else. Exposing people to this music, and taking it from one dimension to Twyla’s vision, mixing the music with dance, I just think it’s wonderful."

Though Tharp had a definitive idea of what music she wanted for the show, she sought help from Pignone to find the precise quality she wanted in the vocal takes or to suggest songs that might work for the mood she wanted to create.

Though there’s a big band onstage playing to Sinatra’s voice, in a few numbers, like the wistful "September of My Years," Tharp wanted the original orchestra to be heard, Pignone says, "because you’re never going to hear that sound again."

"Come Fly Away" is grounded in that sound, and in Sinatra’s particular talents as an actor. Tharp says his ability to create dramatic characters with his voice, like an opera singer, is what makes this theatrical adaptation possible.

The Sinatra family threw open their archives to help her with her current project, giving her access to recordings she had not heard. In a special tribute at the end of "My Funny Valentine," sound engineers isolated Sinatra’s voice from the musical track so audiences will hear him singing a cappella.

"That was never recorded that way, and he never released it that way," Tharp says. "We did that in order to just give him a presence on stage. Not him as a singer, but him as a man."

Nancy Sinatra was moved to tears at the Atlanta premiere in September, telling Tharp, "I wish my father were here to see this." She says Tharp "reaches through the chaos of our lives and, with the help of Frank Sinatra’s voice, shows us that everything is going to be all right."

While Sinatra cultists will find much to love here, "Come Fly Away" goes beyond nostalgia. For one thing, in compiling her play list, Tharp didn’t select Sinatra’s songs for their own sake, but for their dramatic potential. The choreographer creates a poignant moment, for example, by juxtaposing "You Make Me Feel So Young" with "September of My Years."

Her dances do not illustrate the lyrics of the songs in any obvious way, instead capturing general feelings of desire, loneliness, hurt, anger or joy.

And "Come Fly Away" is by no means a greatest hits collection, á la "Mamma Mia!" or "Jersey Boys" or even Tharp’s own "Movin’ Out."

("If Twyla did the greatest hits of Frank Sinatra," Pignone says, "this show would run eight hours.")

You won’t hear "The Lady is a Tramp" or "It Was a Very Good Year." But you will rediscover gems like "Lean Baby," one of the first songs Sinatra cut for Capitol Records (and composed by longtime Sinatra collaborator Billy May), and "Wave," from his sessions with Antonio Carlos Jobim.

"Come Fly Away" embraces the American song book, including works not primarily associated with Sinatra and even instrumental showcases like Count Basie’s "Jumpin’ at the Woodside," which concludes the first act.

Though Sinatra is known as the master interpreter, Tharp pointedly gives away some of the numbers to jazz vocalist Hilary Gardner, who even duets with Sinatra on two numbers: the effervescent "You Make Me Feel So Young" and the silky, sensual "Wave."

Sharing the spotlight with the Chairman of the Board was a little hard for Gardner to wrap her mind around.

"It’s an extraordinary thing. We sing — ha, we sing — ‘You Make Me Feel So Young.’ He was so deep in the pocket on that tune, to be singing that tune, to sing that with him on a stage, with a band, it’s really heavy. . . . It makes me better. It makes me sing harder."

Gardner makes herself scarce for "My Way" and the other Sinatra numbers he made his own, but does her own takes on other classics. A flirty, floaty "I’ve Got the World on a String" and a heartfelt "I’ve Got a Crush on You" provide a female perspective and undercut a bit of the Sinatra machismo. "It’s the embodiment of the jaunty, masculine, hard-swinging stuff," Gardner says, "but the women in this show really have a lot to say. It seems as though my role here is to provide a musical counterpoint. It’s more, ‘What can I add? What other perspectives can I bring?’ "

Many up-and-coming jazz singers ride the shoulders of the greats, copying their phrasing, Gardner says, but with Sinatra, that’s almost impossible. "To hear the care he takes with phrasing and the way he places consonants and the really fine-tuned quality is the difference between something that swings really hard and something that doesn’t."

"Sinatra," she says, "will swing you into bad health."

Dance writer Robert Johnson contributed to this story.