Taking care of my mother and meeting script deadlines have kept me away from New York for several years now…so I missed all 170 performances there of Catch Me If You Can. That was a new musical by some of the same folks who did Hairspray on Broadway, and they adapted it from the movie of the same name. Briefly, it's the story of a gent named Frank Abagnale, Jr. who liked to forge checks and to do things like become a pilot (without knowing how to fly) or a doctor (without going to medical school). Arresting him became the obsession of an FBI agent named Carl Hanratty and an unusual rivalry/friendship developed between the two men.
The musical — which is done "period" in the sixties, though with a few anachronisms — is staged like a variety show of the day. It starts in an airport with Hanratty finally getting his man. Then that man hosts The Frank Abagnale Jr. Show, replaying the events of his life like everyone is on The Andy Williams Show. The music is bouncy, the story is interesting (though stretched a bit thin by the end) and there's a chorus of very cute young women who play stewardesses, nurses and other women in Frank's world.
I liked what I saw of it in online clips…and I especially liked the musical number that Norbert Leo Butz did on the Tony Awards. On the other hand, it did close rather swiftly and a few friends who'd seen it told me of their disappointment. The national tour is inching its way across America and when I saw that it was alighting briefly at the Pantages up in Hollywood, I decided on an impulse to get tickets.
I wouldn't if I'd realized it was a non-equity (i.e., non-union) tour. As a pro-union guy, I'm uncomfy with the ethics and as a theater-goer, I'm aware that non-equity shows frequently suck. That's largely because they start with the premise of "let's do it cheap" and they have to cast from a talent pool that excludes the best folks, who are all Equity members. This one's advertised as "The Original Production From Broadway." That means the same script, music, sets, costumes and staging…but none of the same actors.
I'd paid for the tix before I realized that so Carolyn and I went last night…and I think it helped that I went in with low confidence because I had a pretty good time. I can see why the show didn't fly higher and longer in New York. It gets rather tedious and forced at the end, and all that dazzling choreography services numbers that only occasionally feel special — the one Butz did on the Tonys, for instance. Still, it has an energy and a pace that until the last twenty minutes or so, made it hard for me to take my eyes off the stage. And the young man who plays Frank, Stephen Anthony, is sensational. The audience loved him and also Merritt David Janes, who played the determined FBI agent.
So as non-equity tours go, it's a good one. They journey next to Chicago, then Lansing, then Milwaukee and Detroit and onward, all for brief layovers. As musical comedies go…well, I'd probably do you a favor if I told you it wasn't very good, but then you went anyway and it could exceed your expectations. It sure exceeded mine.