Playwright: Terrence McNally; Score: Marc Shaiman & Scott Wittman. At: Cadillac Palace Theatre, 151 W. Randolph St. Tickets: 800-775-2000 or www.broadwayinchicago.com; $18-$85. Runs through: April 14
To use a baseball analogy, Catch Me If You Can is a solid triple rather than a home run. While that's sometimes perfectly acceptable, it's a disappointment when you consider that the majority of the creative team who cooked up Catch Me If You Can are also the folks behind the 2002 global smash hit musical Hairspray.
Catch Me If You Can doesn't quite cut it with its intriguing show concept idea, despite the best efforts of songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman (Smash), playwright Terrence McNally (Ragtime), director Jack O'Brien (The Full Monty) and choreographer Jerry Mitchell (Legally Blonde). Though perfectly enjoyable, you can also sense the effort and strain that went into transforming the true-life tale of young con man Frank Abagnale Jr. (and the 2002 Steven Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can that was inspired by him) into a swinging and stylish 1960s TV musical variety revue.
Catch Me If You Can flopped on Broadway after a five-month run in 2011, so consider yourself lucky that the recognizable show title and its creative talents prompted a non-Equity national tour to be sent out. And when compared to the Broadway original, the touring Catch Me If You Can features many improvements.
A major plus is in the casting. On Broadway, Aaron Tveit was too much of an overconfident pretty boy to make you truly care for his Frank Abagnale, Jr. As Frank on tour, Stephen Anthony comes off as far younger and more vulnerable, which is a plus to make you empathize with such a crafty liar and thief.
Also on Broadway, the amazing charisma of Tony Award winner Norbert Leo Butz made you care more about the obsessive FBI agent Carl Hanratty rather than Frank. As Hanratty on tour, Merritt David Janes doesn't live up to Butz's performance, but that actually benefits the show overall by putting the focus back where it should be.
Other solid performances include Dominic Fortuna as the slick Frank Abagnale Sr.; Caitlin Maloney as Frank's French mother, Paula; and Aubrey Mae Davis as the underutilized Act II love interest Brenda.
Although the orchestra and the onstage bandstand has been scaled back for David Rockwell's touring Catch Me If You Can set, one big improvement is the addition of a big background LED video screen on that allows for many more cool 1960s-style graphics and animations (designed by Bob Bonniol) to establish the show's many locales and shifting moods.
All this adds up to a Catch Me If You Can that works as an entertaining and jazzy 1960s revue attached to a chase caper story. No, Catch Me If You Can doesn't hit it out of the park like Hairspray, but it's still bright and vibrant fun on its own.