This isn’t a sponsored post.
BrumHour saw Catch Me If You Can at invitation of The Alexandra
By Dave Massey twitter.com/BrumHour
This production contains misogyny and gunfire.
Review: Catch Me If You Can at The Alexandra
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ A Great Thriller!
Directed by Bob Tomson, Written by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert. Based on Trap For a Lonely Man by Robert Thomas
Daniel Corban (Patrick Duffy) is on honeymoon with his new wife in New York state’s Catskill Mountains. A woman (Linda Purl) appears with Father Kelleher (Ben Nealon) claiming to be his wife. Daniel denies she is his wife and a local policeman Inspector Levine (Gray O’Brien) is called on to unravel the truth.
Before we start the rest of this review, you’ve probably noticed this story isn’t about based on a film starring Leonardo DiCaprio, it is actually based on a French thriller and first performed in New York in 1965.
This is a wonderful thriller with plenty of twists and turns to keep an audience guessing right until the final moments. Patrick Duffy is excellent as our leading man, he himself being an American Blockbuster Soap Opera Acting Legend (I’m sure there’s a trademark in their somehow, hence the capital letters.) Linda Purl shines too as a woman seemingly trying to kill her new husband.
The script is scattered with humour, most of which comes from Gray O’Brien‘s police detective and from a scene stealing turn by Hugh Futcher who plays Sidney. It is this gentle humour that escalates this production and story into a five-star production for me.
The set is two walls of a static log cabin with four doors, a huge white sheet hangs behind to represent the mountains beyond and the furniture is both modern but somehow lets the story be set anytime in the last fifty years. The use of a rotary phone early on, just indicates there is no mobile phone signal in the area. The ringing telephone delivers plot points throughout.
I’m in the great position of telling you, my dear reader, that there are plenty of tickets to see this great two-hour thriller this week in Birmingham and that you SHOULD… Catch it while you can! (I know!)
Catch Me If You Can is at The Alexandra until 30th April 2022. The UK Tour currently continues until 2nd July. See the tour dates here: kenwright.com/portfolio/catch-me-if-you-can
