Catch Me If You Can and the Broadway "Dream Team"

Jack O’Brien has had considerable success directing musicals inspired by films. “My personal rule of thumb is don’t tell a story again unless you’re going to tell it from a different angle,” says O’Brien, whose impressive list of hits includes The Full Monty, Hairspray and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. It’s a sentiment shared by Jerry Mitchell, who choreographed all three of those shows.

So O’Brien and Mitchell were delighted when the songwriting team of Marc Shaiman and Scott Wittman, with whom they worked on Hairspray, came to them not just with the idea of doing a musical version of Catch Me If You Can, but with a very specific concept that would capture the essence of the Steven Spielberg film while taking the material in a different direction.            

 “They wanted to do the show like a television spectacular,” says O’Brien. “They had already begun the score, which was an homage to the golden years of television. The range of music was incredible.”

Catch Me If You Can is the more-or-less true story of Frank Abagnale, Jr., who ran away from home when he was 16 following his parents’ divorce, and for a five-year period in the 1960s was one of the foremost forgers and scam artists in the world. Between the ages of 16 and 21, Abagnale forged and cashed bad checks totaling some $2.5 million in the United States and 26 other countries, while successfully passing himself off as an airline pilot, a doctor, a college professor and a lawyer. He was ultimately caught and served time in French, Swedish and American prisons. Today he is a consultant and teacher for the FBI, and runs a highly respected security consulting firm.

Spielberg’s film is as much about the chase of Abagnale by the FBI as it is about his adventures. In the movie, Abagnale forms a bond with his pursuer, FBI agent Carl Hanratty, who in real life was a man named Joseph Shea. Abagnale did, in fact, forge a lifelong friendship with Shea, who died in 2005, although several of the interactions between the two men in the film – and the musical – are fictitious.

Like Spielberg, O’Brien saw Catch Me as a tale of redemption. But he wanted to approach the 2011 Broadway musical from a different angle than the movie. “I wanted to explore the father-son axis,” O’Brien continues. “I feel very strongly that men have two fathers and two sons. You have your birth father, and then you have some other man who very often is influential in your life, particularly if you don’t go into the family business. And for older men, if their son doesn’t go into the family business, there’s an adopted son that you give all your knowledge to. I find that very moving. I also wanted to turn the axis of the show around and see it more from the FBI agent’s point of view than the kid’s point of view. I looked at it as the story of a boy who needed the father that he didn’t have, and a man who needed a son that he’d never borne. We tried to move the material away from the sensational into the analysis of the relationship.”

Another distinction between the movie and the show is that in the musical, which has a book by Terrence McNally, Abagnale runs away not only because he is devastated by his parents’ divorce, but because he wants to meet girls. “That’s something that Frank Abagnale told us,” says Mitchell. “I’m sure he doesn’t play up that part of the story now. But he was young and his libido was racing.”     

For Mitchell, a self-described “fan of the ’60s,” the opportunity to choreograph some sexy numbers in the style of that decade was irresistible. He did an enormous amount of period research, as he does with every show he works on. “To me, great choreography is about nailing the period and telling the story and making it exciting,” he says. “But I don’t just research the dances of the period; I research the period in general. In this case, I read Frank’s autobiography, and watched a video in which he gives a 45-minute talk about his life. I also got a lot of visual stimulation from our set designer, David Rockwell, who does these inspirational boards. One board was all about the uniforms that stewardesses wore. There were others about the architecture at airports in the 1960s, the hot colors of 1966, and motel signs from 1966.”      

Of course, he also watched a lot 1960s television shows starring the likes of Tom Jones, Dean Martin, Mitzi Gaynor – and Mitch Miller. “The opening number, ‘Live in Living Color,’ hearkens back to the Mitzi Gaynor specials that had big, splashy opening numbers,” says Mitchell. “There’s a number in the second act called ‘Doctor’s Orders’ that’s sort of one-part ‘Laugh-In’ and one part Dean Martin’s Golddiggers. And another big number was inspired by ‘The Mitch Miller Show.’”

For O’Brien, a conversation with Abagnale helped him find a key to the stage character. “He’s such a star,” says O’Brien. “His presence is luminous; he couldn’t be more affable and charming. We were at dinner one night, and he told a story about how the government wanted him to fly to Denver to try out an ATM machine that they felt was crime proof. They sent him a photograph of it, and he said, ‘I don’t have to go to Denver. I know I can get into that machine.’ They didn’t believe him, and they insisted he take the trip. So he took a flight to Denver, found the ATM machine, and immediately fouled it. And the FBI was flabbergasted. I asked him how he knew he’d be able to taint that machine. He said, ‘I don’t really know how to explain it.’ And I said, ‘Let me ask you something. I play piano by ear. I studied music for five years, but I was never a very good pianist because I could play better by ear than by reading music. I don’t know how I do it. I can just sit down at the piano and start playing. Is it like that?’ And he said, ‘That’s exactly what it’s like.’ When I realized that it’s like a sixth sense, it made the room dance for me. It meant we didn’t have to know or explain; we had to celebrate. He’s sort of mystified about it too, and I think it’s part of why he’s so humble. He doesn’t seem to think he’s that special. He just thinks that this is something he can do.”        

One of Mitchell’s biggest challenges was finding a reason for Hanratty, the upright, uptight FBI agent, to dance. “He’s certainly not a character who would sing or dance,” says Mitchell. “So he has to be able to make a statement that is so much larger than life that it’s okay for him to dance. And we did that by having him set his rules, with a song called ‘Don’t Break the Rules.’ The scene takes place at target practice on an FBI firing range. I said, ‘What if the targets are actually black silhouetted dancers with targets on their backs?’ And I asked our costume designer, William Ivey Long, if he could make a jacket where the target electrically lights up. As the number starts, these targets begin to sway. Then they come to life and begin to back up Hanratty, like they would if he were a star in a television show. It ended up being one of the biggest showstoppers I’ve ever created. And the reason the audience responds to it is because in the center of all of this fantastic dancing, you have this bumbling, shoe-tied-in-knots FBI guy who is keeping up with these great dancers – but with none of their élan. He’s completely common, and it’s thrilling to watch.” 

When rehearsals began for the national tour, the artistic team took a new look at the show, reinstating some material that had been cut following the first production in Seattle, which preceded Broadway. “We’d made some changes from Seattle to New York that were very helpful in terms of storytelling, but which didn’t land as successfully,” says O’Brien. “So we’ve restored some of the things that we probably should never have changed. It was great for us to have the opportunity to revisit the material. I’m thrilled that the show is out on the road, because I have great confidence that we’ve told this wonderful story in a way that audiences love.” 

The show’s biggest fan is likely Abagnale himself. “I was so fortunate to have the best of the best make a movie about my life, and then have the best of the best make a play about my life,” he says. “Both on film and onstage, they bring out the redemption in the story, which is important to me. I love the play, I love the music, and I’m blessed that I had such incredible people tell the story.”

See Catch Me If You Can in Chicago

Catch Me If You Can is playing at the Cadillac Palace Theatre in Chicago from April 2-14, 2013. Ticket prices range from $18 to $85 each, and can be purchased at www.broadwayinchicago.com. Group tickets for 10+ are now on sale by calling Broadway in Chicago Group Sales at 312-977-1710.