Windmill Theatre Players’ newest production “Catch Me if You Can” has a familiar title, but this is not the 2002 film about a runaway cheque forger — it is a murder mystery with its own share of intrigue.
“Catch Me if You Can” is a murder mystery set in an isolated hunting lodge not a remake of the Steven Spielberg film starring the globetrotting Leonardo DiCaprio and Tom Hanks in hot pursuit.
Steve Penman, the director of Windmill’s “Catch Me If You Can” which premiers in High River on April 8, said when he first became aware of the script it did remind him of an old movie.
“I have actually had an acquaintance with this play for a lot of years,” he said. “I saw a movie back in something like 1980 or 81 called ‘Vanishing Act,’” he said. “It had a real interesting story with a lot of neat things going on. Then a couple of years later I was going through a bunch of Windmill scripts and I pulled one out and read it. It was exactly the same story but the play was called ‘Catch Me if You Can’.”
Even though he liked the script, written in the 1960s by Jack Weinstock and Willie Gilbert, Penman shelved it because Windmill did not have enough men at the time to cover off the male roles.
About a decade ago the experienced actor and director said he examined the script for a second time.
“I pulled it out again a number of years ago, about the time the movie ‘Catch Me if You Can’ came out with a totally different story,” Penman explained.
He passed on doing the production again because he thought too many people would confuse it with the Spielberg film. Then last year Penman said he looked at the play one more time and decided the moment was finally right to bring it to the stage.
The Windmill show stars Bill Stevenson and Breighanne Brandford as Daniel and Elizabeth Corban. Corban is in advertising and he and his bride are spending a weekend at an upstate New York hunting lodge. Soon she goes missing and a police inspector (played by Jesse Primmer) is called in.
Veteran Windmill performer Eric Baxter is also part of the cast playing the role of Father Kelleher. He said his character inadvertently plays a part in widening the scope of the play’s mystery.
“I am a priest who tries to help Corban and his wife reunite,” Baxter said. “Corban is the lead. His wife has disappeared and the priest brings her back. Corban doesn’t believe the woman I have with me is his wife.”
Baxter said the play takes many more twists and turns from there offering a fun whodunit adventure.
“Catch Me if You Can,” a two-act murder mystery with more than a few laughs, will be featured in dinner theatre performances April 8, 9, 14 and 15 at the Highwood Memorial Centre in High River. A Sunday afternoon matinee show goes April 10 and an evening performance will be held April 16. For show times and tickets call Celia at 403-652-7913.
