Rat pack retro — 'Live at the Sands' comes to Kingsbury Hall next week

"Fly Me to the Moon" ... "New York, New York" ... "I've Got You Under My Skin" ... "Mack the Knife" ... "That's Amore."

Those are only five of the nearly 40 songs featured in "The Rat Pack: Live at the Sands," which opens at Kingsbury Hall Tuesday night for eight performances.

The amazing talents of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. established Las Vegas as an entertainment destination, forced a change in segregation policies and, above all, contributed to the Great American Songbook.

The image is iconic: Sinatra, Martin and Davis, standing in a swirl of cigarette smoke, highball glasses in one hand and a microphone in the other. But beyond the great music was the friendship.

"I want to show the audience the friendship. I want them to understand the way the friendship operated," Mitch Sebastian, director and choreographer, said in a phone call from his home in London. "Though this is not a re-enactment of an actual concert, everything on stage did actually happen in concert. I've just written a little bit of connecting material."

"Mitch really focused on the detail," said David Hayes, who plays Sammy Davis Jr. "There are a lot of Rat Pack shows out there. But Mitch has taken it to a level that everyone else tries to duplicate."

Hayes, who admired Davis long before getting the part, said, "It's very authentic. We're using old microphones with the cords, we have the shark-skin suit, it's a very period piece. If they smoked and drank on stage, that's what we do. It's not politically correct, but that's what it was."

"You're seeing the golden years of American entertainment at its best," Hayes said after talking about the interactive nature of the show. "The relationship on stage and with the audience is exciting. It's different every night. If something happens we don't act around it, we react to it. And the music is timeless."

That music, all 40 songs of it, will be backed by a 15-piece band, some of whom will be local professional musicians. And, of course, with the Rat Pack you need some "broads" — the beautiful backup singer-dancers, The Burelli Sisters.

"I've worked with some of the musical theater greats," Sebastian said, "but when I started working on this stuff — it's just amazing. The detail, the nuance, it's so beautifully written and so wonderfully constructed. That quality of work is really amazing."

"It's a concert. It's set in the 1960s at The Sands — these guys had an enormous repertoire," said Sebastian, who knew little about the Rat Pack when he began working on the project in 1991.