Review: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN is a Catch at Rainbow

A rumpled trenchcoat. A sandwich. A cup of coffee. An apparent total disinterest in the actual problem at hand. And he says he's a cop? Oh, wait. You know the guy. You love him. He was on television for years. He's the LAPD's Lieutenant Colum - oh, sorry. He's the Catskills' Inspector Levine, the only Jew besides Sidney the deli owner who lives there year 'round, apparently, back in the Catskills' heyday, and if he looks a lot like Lieutenant Columbo, who's an Italian cop rather than a Jewish one (but he was played by Peter Falk, so who knows?) and lives in some West Coast city, well, Levine was there first. Levine is reputedly the inspiration for Levinson and Link's legendary television sleuth, and he's the dizzying, baffling, but somehow brilliant detective of CATCH ME IF YOU CAN by Robert Thomas, Jack Weinstock, and Willie Gilbert.

At Rainbow's Comedy Playhouse right now, directed by Cynthia DiSavino, Rainbow veteran Doug Cashell dons the wrinkled trench coat of wonder and assumes the mantle of idiot savant detective Levine, smack dab in the middle of a missing persons investigation centering around a Catskills cabin. Is it murder? That's hard to tell when there's no body, and harder yet to tell when a missing wife walks right in the cabin door, to the husband's protests that she's not the woman who disappeared. Cashell has the Columbo-type vibe down cold - is he there when you're talking to him? Someone's missing, someone else is dead on the floor, and he's worrying about pastrami? Remember when you watch - Levine was there first. That Columbo guy? Copycat. With no pastrami.

Brian Viera, who makes the rounds of Lancaster theatre (and we are all better off for it), is a creditable Daniel Corban, husband of a very missing wife - he's got just the right degree of concern for her and total bewilderment at the bizarre woman who's walked in announcing that she's glad to be back with him. He's fairly heavily insured - is she in a plot to get his life insurance? Rachel Blauberg's Elizabeth Corban neatly walks the tightrope between sane woman certain her husband isn't sane, and sane woman with a plan to kill for money - or so Daniel seems to fear. Sam Shea is great fun as Father Keller, apparently the most murderous priest in the Catskills or any other mountain range, and Elizabeth's henchman. Or is he something else entirely?

Nothing's as it seems in this comic mystery, except, possibly, Sidney the deli guy, played by Rosser Lamason. King of the Kaiser roll, count of corned beef, prince of pastrami, he's central both to the plot and to Inspector Levine's stomach, without which this missing persons case can't be solved. Sidney can make you forget that this is Rainbow and that you just ate, so persuasive is Lamason at pushing a hot deli sandwich on stage.

Angela DeAngelo and Joe Winters, both of whom are always a pleasure to see, play Corban's boss and his wife, if that's who she really is - no, nobody's who they seem to be around that cabin - who own the cabin and weren't expecting to have the Corbans intrude on their weekend in the mountains. DeAngelo is funny as sin in her small role, and Winters comes off as cheerfully ready to fire someone for ruining his vacation.

Oh, was there a crime to solve? We almost forgot. And just when you think Levinson did, too, it turns out that he didn't... and, in fact, true to shaping the Italian guy, may have been three steps ahead of the killer all along.

It's a nostalgia trip of a play; that's certain. It isn't contemporary, but it's delightful in its period feel, in its "welcome to the Catskills" Sixties mindset, in its references that even updating with cell phones doesn't quite eliminate. It's interesting that as Sixties and present day merge here under DiSavino's direction, nothing quite feels out of place despite the anachronisms. But it's why great period detective stories never die, and why SHERLOCK and ELEMENTARY work so well in moving Victorian-era detectives into contemporary creatures; great detectives and great mysteries have a timeless quality to them that can always be appreciated, even when they're very period.

If you've ever loved a detective story, bumbling detective or otherwise, and if you need a good laugh - because even the most serious detective stories have humor in them, and this is nothing but humor covering a "never saw that coming, but it works!" ending - this is your show.

Through May 28 at Rainbow's Comedy Playhouse, the happiest, and right now possibly the deadliest, place on earth. Catch it if you can. And don't forget the pastrami. Visit www.rainbowcomedy.com for tickets and information.

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