'The Rat Pack: Live at the Sands', a glossy, affable re-creation of those celebrated concerts, comes to L.A.’s Wilshire Theatre after more than 1,500 performances in London. Tributes are odd occasions. They can either make their objects of veneration feel even more absent or present in spirit if not in letter. Sebastian and crew create an easy vibe, and the period choreography sells the illusion of time travel.

(Costumer Chris Woods' ferociously cut ‘60s suits add to the atmosphere; I’ve never seen a tuxedo fit a man as well as Triffitt's does.) The holidays engage our nostalgia as no other season does. Like 'The Rat Pack', they promise access to the best of what’s come and gone. But time is the velvet rope none of us can get around -- the very barrier that gives the past its value. And no one sang that beautiful pain like Sinatra.