Blake Jenner and ensemble members (Photo by Ashley Erickson)
Reviewed by Joel Beers
Colony Theatre Company
Through Oct. 18
RECOMMENDED
Blake Jenner and Joe Abraham (Photo by Ashley Erickson)
Catch Me If You Can is a glossy 1960s-styled musical based on Steven Spielberg’s 2002 film about con man Frank Abagnale Jr. It’s built around one of the more morally complicated versions of the American dream: Follow your dreams, believe you can become anything you want, then watch what happens when achieving those dreams requires lying to virtually everyone you meet.
Bookended in an airport waiting area in 1964, the story follows Frank (Blake Jenner) who has been on the run for a few years after fleeing a fractured home and reinventing himself on an increasingly audacious scale. Armed with charm, intelligence, nerve and a remarkable capacity for improvisation, he forges checks and cycles through a series of glamorous identities: Pan Am pilot, doctor, lawyer — each assumed with the ease of changing costumes.
That brings him to the attention of dogged FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Joe Abraham), who leads a small, underfunded unit of identity-theft investigators. Their pursuit drives the show’s central cat-and-mouse relationship that evolves into an unlikely friendship. Always one step ahead of Hanratty, Frank falls for nurse Brenda Strong (a strong Gabbie Adner), raising the possibility that he might finally stop running.
Frank is an almost unavoidably likable character: funny, inventive, ambitious and convinced that identity is something you can simply choose for yourself. In that sense, the show is partly an ode to following your dreams.
There is, however, one rather large asterisk.
Frank’s dreams involve fraud, deception and potentially endangering lives by pretending to be both an airline pilot and an emergency-room supervising physician. The musical lives in that uncomfortable gap between admiring his nerve and recognizing what his fantasy life can cost other people.
This Michael Donovan-helmed production understands that Frank’s greatest talent isn’t forgery. It’s performance.
The show’s book is by Terrence McNally, with music by Marc Shaiman and lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman It looks terrific, beginning with Jennifer Lynn Deck’s exquisite costumes, which embrace the sleek, candy-colored vision of the 1960s, from stewardess outfits to Mitch Miller-style dancer getups. More importantly, it leans heavily into the musical’s framing device: Frank isn’t just telling us his story — he’s staging it as a television variety show.
That gives the production some of its most entertaining moments. The bright, presentational staging and ever-present ensemble make several numbers feel less like conventional musical theater than something beamed in from a prime-time TV studio. You can almost imagine Frank Sinatra or Sammy Davis Jr. strolling into the middle of one, grabbing a microphone and trading moves with the dancers.
That polished artificiality is exactly right for Frank. He isn’t merely living a fantasy: he is producing one.
As Frank, Jenner radiates the necessary charisma, along with the clean-cut looks of a college quarterback. It’s the kind of face that helps explain why strangers might accept him as whatever authority figure he claims to be.
He may not be the strongest dancer onstage, but oddly that almost works in his favor. Frank is a human chameleon, surviving by studying people and becoming whatever the moment requires. At times, Jenner’s dancing seems to work the same way. He watches the dancers around him, absorbs their movements and reproduces them.
Whether entirely intentional or not, it becomes an intriguing extension of the character. Frank learns a dance step much the way he learns to be a pilot, doctor or lawyer: watch closely, copy convincingly and trust that confidence will fill in the gaps.
Some of the production’s strongest work comes from the men pursuing and shaping him.
Abraham is terrific as Hanratty, which matters because the musical gradually becomes almost as much his story as Frank’s. What begins as a straightforward pursuit of a con man develops into something richer as Hanratty’s determination gives way to frustration, fascination and paternal affection.
Kevin Bailey, as Frank’s father, is another standout. His charm, swagger and tendency to bend reality help explain where Frank gets both his gifts and his weaknesses. Their scenes give the show some of its strongest emotional grounding.
Beneath the sharp suits, fake identities and swinging score (performed flawlessly by the in-house band, led by Brent Crayon) is a kid trying to rebuild a life and family to replace the one that has disappeared. That tension between reinvention as liberation and reinvention as escape is where Catch Me If You Can becomes more than just a slick period musical.
The production has plenty of dazzle. What makes it stick is what all that dazzle is trying to hide.
Colony Theatre Company, 555 E. Third Street, Burbank; Fri., 8 pm; Sat., 2 & 8 pm; Sun., 3 pm; thru Oct. 18. www.colonytheatre.org Runtime: approximately two hours and 30 minutes with an intermission.
