Joel Harper-Jackson on becoming Frank Sinatra in the West End

Joel Harper-Jackson is doing things his way as he takes on the role of a lifetime as “Ol’ Blue Eyes” in the West End premiere of Sinatra The Musical.

Summary

• Joel Harper-Jackson is starring in Sinatra The Musical at the Aldwych Theatre
• The musical documents the singer's turbulent early career and affair with movie star Ava Gardner
• Harper-Jackson's other credits include Standing at the Sky's Edge and Cock

Speaking on the Call to Stage podcast earlier this year, musical theatre performer Joel Harper-Jackson revealed that he isn’t attracted to the idea of fame. “I’m very solitary, I’m very quiet and I don’t like a fuss. I feel like the job is the drama,” he said.

But he might have to make peace with a bit more attention. His next project is likely to catapult him into the spotlight, as he steps into the shoes of one of the most famous singers of the 20th century: Frank Sinatra.

The Standing at the Sky’s Edge performer will play "Ol' Blue Eyes" in Sinatra The Musical, capturing the American musician and actor in his younger years as his career takes off following a performance at the Paramount Theatre in New York in 1942.

Songs like “Come Fly With Me” and “That’s Life” were waiting to be written (the musical will feature a broad catalogue of his music, including later hits) and Sinatra was dealing with a turbulent time in his personal life, caught up in an affair with the movie star Ava Gardner while married to his first wife Nancy. As Harper-Jackson says, “the lines get blurred, it gets messy, and he makes lots of mistakes [...] The show isn’t shying away from the bad stuff.”

Sinatra’s illustrious career spans six decades, with 59 studio albums tucked under his belt, so why does Harper-Jackson think the musical’s creators Joe DiPietro (writer) and Kathleen Marshall (director/choreographer) chose to focus on this early period? “For me, the harder years of someone's life are the most fascinating. That's the story, that's the part I want to know about — to see them come out of the ashes and make it big,” he says. “It's fascinating that the Frank Sinatra that we all know and love almost didn't exist.”

He continues: “The show is about perseverance and resilience. I think that’s why I resonate with him so much.”

The performing arts were new to Harper-Jackson’s family when he showed an interest in drama and music during his GCSEs — though he reveals that “one of my great-aunts ran away with the circus”. He is dyslexic, and struggled with his classes, but a music teacher saw his potential and sent him to opera lessons. Harper-Jackson also credits his drama teacher for giving him opportunities, specifically citing a workshop with Nikki Davis-Jones, who was starring in Blood Brothers. “My first ever job [in the Rent concert 20th anniversary tour] was with Nikki Davis-Jones, so it was a really cool full-circle moment,” he adds.

Harper-Jackson’s start in the industry was challenging. His family had fallen on hard times and he didn’t have a security net if performing didn’t work out. But he says the experience “formed me. It gave me a lot of grit and resilience [...] No one is going to give you anything in this industry, you have to knock down their bloody door and say, ‘I’m the one.’”

Marianne Elliott’s West End production of Cock was a huge turning point. The country had just come through Covid and Harper-Jackson had a “proper wobble”. He continues: “I didn’t know whether I could perform anymore, so I accepted that job as the understudy [for the characters John and M] simply to break myself into theatre gently.”

Harper-Jackson’s reintroduction was anything but gentle, as he suddenly found himself in the principal cast after Taron Egerton had to withdraw from the show for personal reasons. Starring opposite Bridgerton’s Jonathan Bailey was a “surreal moment” and as he was “thrust into the spotlight, it was either fight or flight”. The opportunity opened doors, with Harper-Jackson landing roles in Rob Hastie’s production of Sheffield-based musical Standing at the Sky’s Edge, as well as his first TV roles in The Devil’s Hour and Daddy Issues. He remembers driving between filming for Devil’s Hour in the day and performing in Sky’s Edge in the evening and shedding a tear in the car, thinking “this is my life”.

Despite reaching those landmark moments in his career, Harper-Jackson says there was no time to stand still or become complacent. In the past couple of years, he was in workshops for a number of major new shows as the supporting or lead role, but kept being told “you’re too old, your voice is not rough enough, your voice is too beautiful, or we’ve gone for a name [...] It gave me a great reality check, because it made me go ‘no matter what happens in the future, I can never think this is going to be plain sailing.’”

Everything happens for a reason though, as Harper-Jackson points out that all of those opportunities would have clashed with Sinatra. He is now returning to the Aldwych, the theatre where he made his West End debut as a swing in another biographical show: Beautiful — The Carole King Musical. “It’s going to be so nice to go back playing the leading man,” he says.

The audition process was a special experience. On the second day, he met Sinatra’s daughter Tina, as well as executives from Universal Music Group, and after months of feeling like he wasn’t good enough, he went in “taking no prisoners”. He performed “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” and started to walk towards the panel, performing the song at their feet like he was in a cabaret bar. He finished the audition with “That’s Life”, leaving “nothing in the tank”, and saw Tina crying. She held his face in her hands and said: “You are just my father, there’s something in your eyes.”

He’s keen to point out that his Frank “will not be an impersonation”, yet he recognises the pressure in playing a figure whose voice remains recognisable to this day. Harper-Jackson has done extensive research for the role, watching over 30 of Sinatra’s films (and hopes to have finished them all by the end of his contract), but he knows that he eventually needs to let everything go and start inhabiting the role for himself.

Harper-Jackson elaborates: “It's a thing of ownership. For a man who was so hell bent on doing things his way, if I, as the actor, am always asking ‘what would he do?’, that's not in Frank's way of thinking.” He says that Tina gave him some great advice: “It was something that Frank always used to say, and it was quite simply, ‘fuck ‘em’. She said, ‘Do not get in your head, you need to have the attitude that you know what you are doing [...] The powers above have given this to you for a reason, so trust that.’”

Harper-Jackson is closely guarding the mannerisms he will be using — “if I tell you then everyone's going to be looking for them” — but how will he be capturing Sinatra’s distinctive voice? “I’ve been known as the singer who sings very high. I do have a lower range but no one tends to hear it [...] It’s a hard line to tread because, very clearly, there’s the sense of ‘don’t be a tribute act’. So it’s having little nods to him tonally in my voice, and my range has definitely gotten lower and thicker.”

Being kitted out in Sinatra’s distinctive suits has also helped him get into character. “I went to a tailor and he fitted me with five suits. It feels very expensive — and very Frank.”

As for why Sinatra’s music has endured for so long, Harper-Jackson believes it is because he was “one of the most brilliant storytellers of the last century”. He continues: “His music was honest. Everything had intention and meaning, and I think that sort of creativity was probably extremely refreshing. It is timeless, sophisticated, and classy.”

Book Sinatra The Musical tickets on LondonTheatre.co.uk

This article first appeared in the July 2026 issue of London Theatre Magazine.

Photo credit: Joel Harper-Jackson at at Aki London & Kiyori Bar, Marylebone. (Photos by Ellie Kurttz, dressed by Moss, hair and makeup by Becca Lymbourides)