Catch Me If You Can The Musical - Koorliny Arts Centre (14 June 2023)

The suit jacket. Elegant, refined, a mark of status and authority in the sixties. With the right jacket, well, you could be most anyone. A substitute teacher, an airline co-pilot, a doctor, a lawyer, even an FBI agent. After you served a few years in jail for bank fraud of course. It also helps if you have charm, confidence, and the ability to churn milk into butter, mouse-like. This is the tale that awaits us in the musical adaptation of the movie Catch Me If You Can, itself an adaptation of the book written by our charming protagonist Frank William Abagnale Junior. A young man who conned his way across America and beyond, cashing forged cheques that eventually totalled in the millions.

It is significant then that costuming plays a prominent role in this production staged at the Koorliny Arts Centre. Frank Jr. (Joshua Firman) is coming to us Live In Living Colour where his attire marks his progression from teenage runaway to notorious ‘paperhanger’ and all the professions he brazenly inhabits. By contrast, his nemesis, FBI agent Carl Hanratty, and his associates are doomed to don “black and white” as Hanratty doggedly pursues the con-man until the bitter end. It is a lovely touch when Firman sheds the garb of jacket (and tie) once Frank Jr’s goose is cooked and all pretence has finally been dropped.

The ensemble, even more so, is given a wonderful array of colourful and sixties-styled costumes from sleek airline hostess outfits to the risqué nurses’ uniforms in the Act 2 attention grabber Doctor’s Orders which sets young Frank’s heart all a flutter and jolts the audience out of any post-intermission lull. Excellent work by Head of Wardrobe Lyn Leeder and Costume Assistant Neroli Sweetman.

But back to our story. I rewatched the Spielberg movie starring Leo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, and Christopher Walken a couple of nights ago to familiarise myself again with the plot. I wondered how certain aspects would translate into a musical. The answer in the Book by Terrence McNally, Music by Marc Shaiman, and Lyrics by Shaiman and Scott Wittman is to break the fourth wall, go meta and turn the whole thing into a ‘show’ and blast through exposition in the early musical numbers. It is all so breezy, fast paced, and cheeky that the conceit works an absolute treat. In this it is helped immeasurably by a swinging 60s-themed score, stylish choreography by Kate Leeder, and the substantial stage presence of Joshua Firman in the lead role.

Firman brings considerable charm, acting chops, and the best singing voice I have heard at Koorliny if not in all the community theatre shows I have attended over the years. He soars vocally in the penultimate song Goodbye and sings throughout with such joy that it is palpable. There is a twinkle in his eye which hints at the childlike wonder Frank Jr. feels when he lucks into his next con. But there is also the hurt over the failure of his parents’ marriage which is a contributing factor in Frank Jr’s behaviour.

He is well-matched with two other important performances. Chris Gerrish is excellent as the FBI agent determined to get his man, Carl Hanratty. Interestingly, a lot of the pathos in the tragic figure of Frank Sr. played with understated brilliance by Walken in the movie, is transferred to Hanratty in the musical. This is most apparent in the blues-infused number The Man Inside The Clues. Gerrish also excels leading the showy Don’t Break The Rules. The closing number Stuck Together (Strange But True) sees Firman and Gerrish play off each other to great effect and it’s clear that there is a real onstage camaraderie at work here.

The other performance is by Matilda Jenkins as Brenda Strong who appears as the love interest in the second act. Jenkins makes for a forthright and competent Brenda and has a show stopping moment with her wonderful solo Fly, Fly Away which echoed another Shaiman & Wittman song, I Know Where I’ve Been from Hairspray.

John Taylor gives a perfectly fine performance as Frank Abagnale Sr but the role as written somehow feels diminished. Here, Frank Sr. is pitched more as a man who falls into booze after his wife betrays him rather than a far more complicated and tragic figure in Frank Jr’s life. He shares a heartwarming father-son duet with Firman in Butter Outta Cream and, similarly, the confrontation between Frank Sr. and Hanratty turns into the buddy number Little Boy Be A Man.  In both cases the feel-good mood dictated by the overall tone of the musical undercuts the troubled nature of a man Frank Jr. looked up to and wanted to make whole again.

Other performances that caught the eye include Catherine Archer’s classily staged Don’t Be A Stranger and Rp van der Westhuizen’s bumbling agent who reminded me of an exaggerated version of Oscar Wallace played by Charles Martin Smith in The Untouchables.  

This is a show with a magnetic lead performance, an excellent supporting cast, and an ensemble who all look the part and play up to the inherent fun and sexiness of their multi-faceted roles. The numbers are breezy and well sung (Musical Director Kate McIntosh) with Director Katherine Freind delivering a high energy, brisk production that looks and sounds fantastic.

I would not be surprised if this show features heavily in Finley Award nominations at the end of the year. It is a shining example of the best of community theatre in Perth.