Over the top fun

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels
Until August 9
Huron Country Playhouse
Tickets: 519-238-6000

A con within a con within a con, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is over the top with big songs and big fun on a big stage. A blend of two movies (Scoundrels and Bedtime Story) and old-time musical theatre, the Playhouse version is full of great big stuff.
“The show is a large show in its presentation, so this is a fantastic place to do this show,” says former Playhouse artistic director Brian McKay, gracing the stage here for the first time in 10 years as the dashing conman Lawrence Jamieson.
“It’s just a fantastic, fun, crazy show,” says Steven Patterson, who played the lead in last year’s Miss Saigon and appears as Steve Martin’s Freddy Benson. “You have to keep yourself in decent shape; I think I sweat pounds every day on stage.”
Heather McGuigan is Christine Colgate, the soap queen the two are trying to swindle.
“She is someone who has arrived in a wonderful location and is taken on a trip by these two men,” McGuigan says. “It’s the adventure she was looking for on this grand trip of hers, and she goes along for the ride.”
It’s a fun ride that gets crass at times, but overall is interesting to see familiar faces fronting a Broadway backdrop wearing Broadway clothes bought from the company that first staged the musical in New York.