Catch Me if You Can at the Aurora Fox Arts Center is a mathematical anomaly, defying the maxim that the sum must equal the total of all the parts.
The musical boasts a killer story, some of the best musical writers in the business and a famous movie as a kickstarter, And the Fox has once again accumulated astounding talent and an eye-popping set.
But it just doesn’t quite add up. Catch Me is more perplexing than satisfying from beginning to end as to why this show leaves you feeling more like, “what?” and less like “wow.”
The 2011 Tony-Award-winning musical is based on the life of infamous con man Frank Abagnale, Jr. and the 2002 Leonardo Di Caprio movie made about his life.
Abagnale was a teenager in the 1960s and famously conned his way into jobs in airline cockpits, hospital emergency rooms and court houses as a co-pilot, physician and lawyer before being snagged by an intrepid FBI father-figure agent.
The 2009 musical’s theatrical score is by Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, who won the world with the stage-musical version of “Hairspray.”
How could anything with this much going for it be anything other than amazing?
Catch Me if You Can is not.
The central problem is that the compelling part of Abagnale’s story is how he did it. How could a high-school kid in the 1960s pull off being an airline pilot, ER chief lawyer and pass hundreds of thousands of dollars in bad checks along the way?
The show waves away your curiosity and instead focuses more on what prompted Abagnale to try such a stunt in the first place: the effects of a dysfunctional family, and just how funny that can be.
The conceit is that as Abagnale is being arrested after a years-long chase, he gets the idea that a show would be the perfect way to tell his side of the story. And so in the fuzzy 1960s “Live In Living Color” nostalgia, his story unravels.
This is where the Fox show shines and stumbles at the same time. It’s hard to tell whether the go-go-palooza chorus girls are a parody of the old TV unapologetically sexist era of Jackie Gleason in Miami Beach and Dino Martin, or a tribute to kitchy skimpy costumes and racy numbers. The cliches are endless, naughty nurses playing doctor, flirty flight attendants and easy, sleazy magazine models.
Whatever the show’s going for, the chorus and cast delivers with energy and sizzling choreography. All at once, the show reveals the talent of the creators, the directors and the cast.
Led by Tim Howard as the conniving Abagnale, the ensemble delivers a fierce and furious musical punch from one dazzling number to the next. Howard expertly sings and dances around the challenging numbers and missing story details.
But the rest of the cast is what really helps Howard and the entire show look so good. Relentless FBI agent Carl Hanratty really steers the show, and Aurora theater veteran Keegan Flaugh is masterful at the wheel. He was equally as solid last year at the Vintage Theater’s Funny Girl as Nick Armstein and as John in Miss Saigon. Andy Sievers commanded the stage each time he sang and danced as Abignale’s hugely dysfunctional father.
But two of the supporting actresses blew away the audience. Heather Lacy delivered a sensational performance as Abignale’s French-born mother, Paula. She exuded a distant, calculating provocative woman and gave the show real-theater depth and finesse.
The night, however, belongs to regional theater favorite Sharon Kay White as the blusteringly sexy comic tour de force, Carol Strong, the Deep-South mother of Abignale’s fiance. While White is famous for making every role seem that it was written for her, this one is a memorable escapade that encapsulates the best and most obvious part of the show: People are really so weird.
And all around the laser-sharp cast, music, songs and choreography, Aurora Fox scene designer Brandon Philip Case and lighting designer Seth Alison have created one of the venue’s more remarkable sets in 30 years, and that’s saying something. White arcs and mod-colored floating orbs offer a dreamy, bigger than reality retro-space that could easily breathe life back into Sonny and Cher or the June Taylor Dancers.
It’s one of the reasons why it makes no sense that just about every part of this entertaining and enthusiastic show adds up to a fun night out at the theater, but not an astounding one.
Four out of five stars
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‘Catch Me if You Can’
Aurora Fox Arts Center
9900 E. Colfax Ave.
Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays through May 15
Reserved tickets $22-31
303-739-1970 or aurorafoxartscenter.org