Variety "Catch Me If You Can" review

Pretty positive. She thinks it's too long and too ballad heavy (the only ballads she likes were Fly Fly Away and Goodbye), but has a lot of potential. Wants it to be lighter.

Liked the choreography.

Good reviews for Butz, Wopat, and Butler.

A rave for Tveit, in what she calls a "a star turn."
Catch Me If You Can

CONGRATS MARC! Can't wait to see it on Bway! Love "Fly Fly Away".

P

Maybe they added surtitles. I could barely understand her when I saw it last week.

Long it is. And ballad heavy it is too. I would have thought a chase musical would move faster.

Wopat's role needs trimming. Steals too much of the focus.

Agreed, haven't heard one bad thing about Tveit or Norbert...

It should be noted that THE FIRST WIVES CLUB and CATCH ME IF YOU CAN were reviewed by two different Variety critics, though.

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It is definitely a male minded musical. All the women are portrayed as sluts or naive (or both). Oh yeah...and Linda Hart plays the accordion (please cut this. I adore Linda Hart but her part is useless). I'm slightly amazed that a creative team made entirely of gay men came up with something without one powerful woman. They could easily cut all the female roles without really impacting much of the plot.

This is the kind of show that would sound great on a cast recording but cause the viewer to go "Huh?" when viewing it with McNally's uneven mess of a book.

I think Tviet could actually be used more. He's a fantastic triple threat and there are large chunks where he's missed. Norbert is superb but he gets far too much stage time in relation to the, let's face it, more interesting Tviet character (not knocking Butz here but the story is really about Abergnale).

Again, as I've said, for a chase musical it's really slow.

And Wopat's part has been explanded far too much.

Mitchell's choreography is top notch but I kind of wish he'd have directed it too as the piece would feel more fluid. O'Brien's direction is very uninspired.

EDIT: Wanted to add about the direction. The scenes between Abergnale and the detective never overlap as they should. There's too much waiting for scene shifts (I image they don't want to completely steal City of Angels' half color half black and white idea but if you're going to steal at least rob the whole bank).

It felt like City of Angels (they even steal the black and white motif) meets Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.

Mackie's costumes were lackluster and often misplaced. Rockwell's LCD screen was annoying (is this really the future of set desingn? I hope not).

This all is fixable. There just needs to be more focus on Abergnale, the pace needs to be picked up x 10, the score needs a few bouncier tunes, and McNally either needs to be replaced (where is Meehan when you need him?) or forced to cut his extraneous dialogue. I'd say at least half of the score, completely fine songs all, isn't integral to telling the story.

Updated On: 8/9/09 at 07:41 PM

Nope. No theatre booked.

Keep in mind this is technically a 5th Avenue production. There are no producers over the title or mentioned in the playbill. I also find it odd that Dreamworks doesn't appear to be attached since it's their film.

BobbyBubbly, the protagonist's last name is Abagnale, not "Abergnale."

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"BTW, I noticed that no one is griping about the lack of *big* marquee names in this cast. Odd... "

By this point in his career, Marc Shaimen is the big marquee name in the show and deservedly-so.

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I have to say... I love everyone involved in the show... AND to be REALLY HONEST the show looks and sounds like a HUGE DUD! The video they previewed on here was terrible.