Babatundé, Engleson, Strimel Photo by Craig Schwartz

Sometimes a life looms larger, grander, and more meaningful when it's over. It's as if a halo effect rises to bridge the distance from then to now, and we tend to remember the best of times. This is particularly true of celebrity life, which gathers romantic steam from the ethereal beyond.

The life of Sammy Davis, Jr., currently romanticized with the one-word title, Sammy, on the Old Globe Theatre's stage, offers an example of an aura waxing wide. Not that the rags to riches tale of its hero is unworthy or that the star of this show (Obba Babatunde) is unskilled (quite the opposite in both cases), but that fond memory and fine tunes do not a grand production make.

Thanks to the music and lyrics by Leslie Bricusse--who also wrote the book and co-wrote additional songs with Anthony Newley--orchestration by Ned Paul Ginsburg, and the superb orchestra conducted by Ian Fraser, the show is entertaining. Yet, like most celebrity lives' and chronicles,' it does not live up to expectation.

Keith Glover's capable and knowledgeable direction could not compensate for a flat book. Although there were highlights and lowlights in Sammy's life and in the script, the plot lacks a proper arc. There is drama, but no crescendo, and the last few scenes, especially, drag out the halo effect of a celebrity life now gone.

Babatunde is an enthusiastic and honest performer, and he seemed to gain momentum as the opening night's performance went on, but his voice was hampered by an uneven and harsh sound system. Too bad, for the opening song, "Once In A Lifetime" sets the stage for the story that follows. Give credit to familiarity and nostalgia for making the reverberations a lesser concern, for the songs themselves are what musical numbers should be—singable and emotional.

Ann Duquesnay as Sammy's grandma, Rosa Davis, knows how to add humor and strength to the role and the music, especially livening up the first act with "The Biscuit's Better With The Butter," as she pleads with Sammy's father and uncle (convincingly played by Ted Louis Levy and Lance Roberts, respectively) not to take this child on the road with them. That plea fell on deaf ears and began a 60-year career for little Sammy, as well as the chronicle that begat this production. As common knowledge has it, Sammy boarded the soul train.

But the track does not run through this production. Keith Young's choreography and musical staging is mundane at times, posed at others. The female ensemble looks and moves like a group of real dancers, but the material they have to work with—shuffle and step, lunge and reach—does not do them justice. Sammy had a dancer's reputation, and his life in showbiz began as a hoofer before he was old enough for kindergarten. But Obba Babtunde's moves, like those of his fellow cast members, are contained, lacking the bravura that history expects.

And there is some lovely history in this story, bits and pieces of which come as surprises that momentarily lift the script from merely interesting to appealingly colorful. Sammy's illiteracy, his love affair with Kim Novak, his hastily arranged Las Vegas marriage to Loray White (ordered by Harry Cohn), and his abuse in the "integrated" U.S. Army are some lesser-known details that make the story sing. During intermission, audience members could be heard exclaiming to their seatmates, "I didn't know that, did you?"

What becomes clearer during the second act is that the biggest unknown resided in the psyche of Sammy himself, a man conflicted and self-destructive even while he was celebrated and acclaimed. It doesn't take a psychologist to conclude that his alcoholism, drug addiction, womanizing, and sartorial extravagance all came from a secret yearning to be truly accepted, even as he harbored the suspicion that he was more the Rat Pack's token or pet, than a member of its brotherhood.

Adam James is a confident and self-satisfied Frank Sinatra, and he's got the wink and the hand gestures that characterized "ole blue eyes" and charmed the adoring fans. Troy Britton Johnson plays a comedic, over-the-top Dean Martin, and he makes it work, even with the caricatured, omnipresent cocktail glass, in the silly "Singin' An' Swingin'."

So, despite its disappointments, this is a worthy and worthwhile show. It is not supposed to be a true biography, yet it brings home the period and the person.

Babatunde's moving interpretations of "Who Can I Turn To?" and "The Joker" in the first act and "What Kind of Fool Am I?" (all by Bricusse and Newley) make Sammy's depression felt as only great lyrics lovingly translated can.

Despite his personal demons, Sammy Davis, Jr. paved the way for people of color, particularly black people, and he opened doors that previously had locked them out. Immortalized by Michael Jackson in his tribute "You Were There" (not included in this production) and in Leslie Bricusse's "The Greatest," (which is) those open doors left room for legacies to enter.

It is fitting, then, that Sammy's aura glows long and wide.

"Sammy" plays at San Diego's Old Globe Theatre through November 8. Performances are: Tues/Weds & Sun at 7pm; Thurs-Sat at 8pm; Sun matinees at 2pm. Tickets are: $54-$89, with discounts for students, youth, seniors and groups Reservations: www.TheOldGlobe.org or call 619-23-GLOBE