By Marilyn Lester***It’s not a crazy notion to assume that Frank Sinatra (1915-1998), who rightly deserves the tag “icon,” recorded just about every American Songbook tune ever written in a nearly six-decade career. His albums are still best-sellers. So when three young vocalists in 1999 presented the show they conceived, 
Our Sinatra, a Musical Celebration at the Algonquin Oak Room, success was a sure bet for Eric Comstock, Hillary Kole and Christopher Gines. Within months, Our Sinatra, a Musical Celebration, extended to two acts, began a run at the Off Broadway Blue Angel Theatre. The show played its last performance there in August 2000 and moved to the Reprise Room the next night.
Since then, there have been many more presentations of Our Sinatra, including an early years national tour. The show played Birdland in 2003-2004 with Kole, Tony DeSare and Adam James. The original cast celebrated the ten-year anniversary at the Algonquin. In 2013, Ronny Whyte, Gines and Laurie Wells presented it at 54 Below. It was back to Birdland in 2014 with Comstock, Gines and Harmony Keeney; and then again, post-pandemic shutdown at Birdland in 2021 with Comstock, Karen Oberlin and Jamey Garner.
Now, in 2024 in the Birdland Theater, Comstock and Kole, with Brian Long, proved once again Our Sinatra is a solid, engaging and fun winner. This reviewer has seen Our Sinatra multiple times and it never loses its freshness or appeal. Providing texture to the music, bassist Boots Maleson was a steady, anchoring force of rhythm and timekeeping. He’s also been the show’s bassist in many of its incarnations throughout the years.
Part of the secret of the show’s longevity and success is because Sinatra did record a massive number of songs, many of which were lesser-known entries in the Songbook, such as “Look at Me Now” (Joe Bushkin, John DeVries) and “Without a Song” (Vincent Youmans, Billy Rose and Edward Eliscu). Over the years, Our Sinatra has been extended in length and shrunk back again, and tweaked, but because it stands on solid ground, it always works.
Besides plenty of songs, Our Sinatra has fun facts and delicious humor, with Comstock at the piano serving as de facto host. Kole and Long enter and exit as the group delivers a fast-paced juke box-worth of tunes individually, in duos and trios. In each performer there’s a keen appreciation of lyric and superb storytelling. The sultry Kole can make you run for the tissue box with numbers such as “I’m a Fool to Want You” (Joel Heron, Jack Wolf and Frank Sinatra) and “It Never Entered My Mind” (Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart).
Dispenser of most of the narrative about Sinatra, Comstock, always the suave sophisticate, tackles a variety of moods and emotions, mainly upbeat. Leaving the piano for the verse and a few opening bars of “Pennies from Heaven” (Arthur Johnston, 
Johnny Burke) with Maleson, the cheery tune soon involves an audience sing-along. Comstock’s rendition of “Everything Happens to Me” (Matt Dennis, Tom Adair) was masterful; this tune of bad luck and self-deprecation can be a downer in the wrong hands. Comstock found the ironic humor in the piece and so it landed beautifully. Long is a talented, smooth and versatile crooner. He can move with ease from the jaunty “Hooray for Hollywood” (Richard Whiting, Johnny Mercer) to the weighty “Old Man River” (Jerome Kern, Oscar Hammerstein II), with a delivery that stands up to the very best of them.
At the end of a fast freight train ride of a “monster medley” (26 songs), the audience was invited to sing along with the inevitable “(Theme from) New York, New York” (John Kander, Fred Ebb). This tune never appeared in early versions of Our Sinatra, but these days it’s just too much a part of the Sinatra legacy to omit. And it was great fun to boot. But the encore was a sweet farewell, as the trio sang in harmony, sans piano, a gorgeous “Put Your Dreams Away (for Another Day)” (Ruth Lowe, Paul Mann, Stephan Weiss).
