Reviving a Treasure: Catch Me If You Can

Written By: Luke Osteen | Issue: Whats News

When Mountain Theatre Company’s Executive Director Scott Daniel took the reins of this venerable Plateau treasure (formerly known as Highlands Playhouse), he promised the emergence from the Covid-shuttered 2020 season would be marked with bigger productions, a swing-for-the-fences attitude toward selections, and a determination to use every modern facet of its new home at Highlands Performing Arts Center.

To those of us who’d been in the Playhouse audience over the decades, that seemed like the height of folly. We’d witnessed underfunded productions delivered before sparse, indifferent audiences, and plays that simply ran out of steam.

It was quite different from the heady days of the 1930s and 40s when the former Highlands School gym became Highlands Playhouse and the imaginations and sheer brio of Jack and “Ted” Wilcox and, from the start, their daughter Collin, delivered season after season of sell-out performances to residents and seasonal visitors alike.

So that was Mr. Daniel four seasons ago, and I’m here in the afterglow of Mountain Theatre Company’s lavish Catch Me If You Can and ready to proclaim, “that guy knew what he was talking about!”

I was tempted to say that last year, with the pitch-perfect run of Jersey Boys and the genre-defying, gender-bending Rocky Horror Show, but now – with the arrival of Catch Me, we’re witnessing the full flowering of Daniel’s bold vision.

This is an effervescent musical based on the peripatetic life of near-mythical conman Frank Abagnale Jr.

If you haven’t read Abagnale’s autobiography of the same name or watched the Steven Spielberg 2002 production, it doesn’t matter.

This show presents teenage Abagnale’s life in a series of vignettes kitted out like one of those old Dean Martin TV specials from the 1960s, complete with kitschy dancers and songs that could have been lifted directly from a vintage Dean Martin Vegas show.

After a frenetic opening scene in which Abagnale is arrested at a Miami airport, he turns to us to present, in musical flashback, his story, his way – the same framing device used to pronounced effect in last year’s masterful MTC production of Jersey Boys. This means mod-colored lighting and a lot of leggy chorus girls and spangled jump-suited guys.

Outlining these capers was the astonishingly talented Vance Klassen as Abagnale, whose pure voice and assured footwork underscored the quicksilver wits and unshakeable confidence of this young bunco artist.

Klassen glides through the role with a smoothness that mirrors the real Abagnale’s audacious trail through the professions of substitute teacher, airline pilot, emergency room supervising physician, and lawyer, all while being wholly unqualified and all while being pursued by relentless FBI Agent Carl Hanratty (Al Dollar).

Dollar brings a resigned humanity to a role that could have easily devolved into a second-rate Javert. With his sad-sack demeanor, he’s comic gold when paired with Klassen’s slippery performance. The duo brings a Road Runner-Coyote fizziness that threads through the entire show, and when they share a Christmas phone exchange, there’s an added poignancy that shadows the remainder of the production.

Adding to the shadows of Abagnale’s unlikely journey are the performances of Bridget Carrow and William Green as Frank Jr.’s war-bride mother and two-bit businessman/hustler father. Both abandon their son – she with her relentless pursuit of respectability and security, and he with his increasingly desperate schemes to Show ‘Em All. Frank Jr.’s heartbreakingly sincere effort to return to his imagined Happy Family fuels the entire production.

As a counterbalance to a pair of tragic parents who seem to drive Abagnale to increasingly desperate acts is Melody Munitz as Brenda Strong – a sweet-natured nurse who offers him a chance at a scam-free life in the daylight. Her “Fly, Fly Away” solo near the end of the show is breathtaking in its range and its deep, heartfelt longing.

And finally, let me devote a few words to the production itself, and how Director Daniel’ swing-for-the-fences operating principle has found its full flowering with this show.

Under the direction of choreographer Erin Leigh Knowles, the entire stage is filled with dancing performers mimicking the go-for-broke dance numbers of TV shows like Hullabaloo or a Dean Martin Golddiggers Variety Show. The twirling mini-skirted nurses who may have sprung from a Hugh Hefner fever dream, or the slinky flight attendants and limber Pan Am pilots bring a delirious energy to Abagnale’s endless spin and swagger.

CJ Barnwell’s lighting design deserves a special shout-out for being the first production in the newly upgraded Highlands Performing Arts Center to fully utilize all its lighting possibilities. His judicious application of light and color subtly enhances every scene and on more than one occasion I was reminded of the legendary cinematographer Harold Rosson’s work in Singin’ in the Rain or Otelli Martelli’s masterful La Dolce Vita.

Well, I’ve really gone on about this show and blown my word count, but if you see me wandering on the Plateau and you have a moment, ask me about my encounter with Frank Abagnale Jr. in 1981 and I’ll explain to you why I’ve always been a terrible judge of human beings and I’ll reveal a scam that he utilized across the United States and Europe that wasn’t mentioned in his autobiography, nor in the Spielberg adaptation, nor even in this remarkable musical.

Catch Me If You Can is playing at Highlands PAC until August 10. Visit mountaintheatre.com for tickets and more information.