BY SCOTT C. MORGAN
Catch Me If You Can and Priscilla, Queen of the Desert The Musical were two of the most hotly anticipated screen-to-stage Broadway musical adaptations of this past season. It's also intriguing to note that both shows have strong ties to the LGBT community in terms of subject matter, or via openly gay creative team members.
So it's disappointing to report that neither show satisfies the hype and buildup. Both shows have great appeal and are undeniably flashy, but neither fully lives up to their creative and artistic potential.
Catch Me If You Can is a reunion for many of the people responsible for the 2002 mega-hit Broadway musical Hairspray. Aside from award-winning book writer Terrence McNally, the Hairspray collective back in action on Catch Me If You Can includes songwriters Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, director Jack O'Brien and choreographer Jerry Mitchell.
In transforming the popular 2002 Stephen Spielberg film Catch Me If You Can into a big Broadway musical, the creative team hit upon a seemingly ingenious staging concept. Just as the dogged FBI agent Carl Hanratty (Norbert Leo Butz) is about to apprehend the master teenage con man and embezzler Frank W. Abagnale, Jr. (Aaron Tveit), the criminal pleads to offer his side of story to justify his actions ... in the form of a spectacular TV variety musical show revue.
This variety show concept allows great opportunities for Shaiman and Wittman to create a swinging 1960s jazz and lounge music score, which is played with plenty of verve by the onstage orchestra led by music director John McDaniel atop David Rockwell's bandstand suggesting a jet-setting airports terminal.
But there are times when the staging concept doesn't mesh well with the narrative. Away from Mitchell's snazzy staging of production numbers, the more introspective scenes struggle to fit in.
Not all of the songs are winners here like they were in Hairspray. For example, the duet "Little Boy, Be a Man" attempts to give Butz's Hanratty and Tom Wopat's drunken Frank Abagnale, Sr. a chance to bond and reflect. But the motivation behind the number doesn't connect to the two characters very convincingly. Also, the femme fatale questioning number of the former Mrs. Abagnale, Paula (Rachel de Benedet), starts off promisingly enough, but eventually goes nowhere as a combination variety show segment that also forwards the plot.
However, perhaps the biggest structural fault is waiting so late in the show to flesh out the love interest, nurse Brenda (underused Hairspray alumna Kerry Butler). Though Brenda and her amusing Southern parents (played well by Linda Hart and Nick Wyman) are introduced at the top of the show, they end up feeling like afterthoughts.
So despite so many great elements on display in Catch Me If You Can, (particularly the wonderfully characteristic turn by Best Actor nominee Butz as the square and relentless agent Hanratty), the show strangely doesn't fully gel. But the expectations for lightening to strike twice after such a mammoth hit like Hairspray may have been set the bar unreasonably high for such a entertaining, if imperfect, new show like Catch Me If You Can.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert is conspicuous in its absence among the 2011 Tony Award contenders for Best Musical this year. (The Book of Mormon, Catch Me If You Can, The Scottsboro Boys and Sister Act are the lucky four nominees.) The only two Tony nominations Priscilla received were for its eye-popping costumes and for actor Tony Sheldon's performance as the aging transsexual Bernadette. (Sheldon has been with the production in Australia, London and now on Broadway.)
Perhaps it's a backlash against yet another jukebox musical that shoehorns preexisting song hits into a new or well-known plot, even though fans of the show will argue that it's only natural for drag queens to lip-sync to well-known pop standards. However, the fact that an Australian musical like Priscilla has to resort to an U.S. and British song list instead of a new score by Aussie songwriters just shows a lack of creative confidence on the part of the show's producers and creative team.
Priscilla is, of course, an adaptation of the 1994 Australian cult favorite film of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which followed two drag queens and one transsexual as they journeyed from Sydney through the outback to do a gig in Alice Springs (where one of the drag queens has a son from a previous marriage to a woman).
Having seen Priscilla in London, I'm sad to report that what little subtlety there was in the show has now been stamped out for Broadway. And the one guaranteed emotional moment for a tear or two between father Tick/Mitzi (Will Swenson) and his long-separated son Benji (Luke Kolbe Mannikus) now becomes a blatant product placement for Lego toys.
Also scrapped from the Broadway Priscilla are references to Australian pop star and gay icon Kylie Minogue, who has been jettisoned in favor of American pop star and gay icon Madonna (no doubt to be more recognizable to U.S. tourists).
The fact that so many pop hits can be switched in without affecting the overall script by Stephan Elliott and Allan Scott essentially shows what a dubious artistic enterprise Priscilla is in terms of musical theater storytelling.
Now there's no denying the amazing talent and stagecraft on display in the show, particularly the outrageous costume creations of designers Tim Chappel and Lizzy Gardiner (the same Academy Award-winning design team behind the 1994 film) and the amazing sets of designer Brian Thompson (the spinning turntable bus particularly stands out).
Priscilla seems custom designed to please throngs of bachelorette party girls and different generations of gay men who want nothing more than an evening of wall to wall glitter and camp. But for more discerning musical theater fans, Priscilla can be written off as a crowd-pleaser more concerned with surface flash rather than any genuine deep-hearted emotion or sentiment.
Catch Me if You Can continues its open run at the Neil Simon Theatre in New York. Visit www.CatchMeTheMusical.com for more information.
Priscilla, Queen of the Desert continues its open run at the Palace Theatre in New York. Visit www.PriscillaOnBroadway.com for more information.
