Tony Danza knew Frank Sinatra — and on Saturday, June 20, he turns that friendship into a full evening of song and storytelling at the Bear’s Den Showroom inside Seneca Niagara. Tony Danza: Sinatra & Stories is the closing night of a two-night Niagara Falls stand, and it is less a concert than a night in a glamorous supper club that happened to wander up to the Falls.
The show is exactly what the title promises: Sinatra classics from the Great American Songbook, threaded with the kind of personal stories most tribute acts can’t tell because they never lived them. Danza did. He shares those memories between numbers — alongside tap dancing, ukulele, and the occasional bit of soft shoe — backed by a four-piece band led by music director James Sampliner. The New York Times called him “a live wire who tap-dances, plays the ukulele, tells stories and radiates irresistible charm.” When Sinatra & Stories played 54 Below in Manhattan this past February, the run sold out.
If your mental file on Danza stops at Taxi or Who’s the Boss?, the rest of the résumé is worth catching up on. He earned an Emmy nomination for his recurring role on The Practice, took Broadway turns in The Producers and A View from the Bridge, logged film work from Angels in the Outfield to Don Jon, and more recently played mob boss Stefano Marchetti on STARZ’s Power Book III: Raising Kanan. Nearly five decades on screen, and the live show is where all of it comes together.
The Room
The Bear’s Den Showroom at Seneca Niagara Resort & Casino is an intimate room of around 440 seats inside the casino complex on Fourth Street in Niagara Falls — close quarters with good sight lines and casino-grade production, exactly the kind of polished cabaret setting this act is built for. Showtime is 8:00 PM.
Coming in from Buffalo or anywhere in Western New York? Budget 30 to 45 minutes depending on where you start and how thick the Falls-corridor traffic runs on a Saturday night. Parking is available on site. Honest advice: get there early, grab dinner at the resort, and make a full night of it — that’s the spirit of the thing.
Tickets
Tickets are $65 and $75, available through Ticketmaster. The February Manhattan run sold out, and this is the second of just two nights at the Falls — don’t sit on it.