Spring 2005. You’re at Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, a new musical based on a Steve Martin movie you’ve been meaning to watch. To be honest, the main reason you’re here is to see Sherie Rene Scott and Norbert Leo Butz reunite after they starred in Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years back in 2000. The show opens on the French Riviera and boasts a bright jazzy score with genuinely funny lyrics by David Yazbek. You meet Lawrence Jameson, a refined con-man (John Lithgow) who is on the lookout for a mysterious, more infamous con-man known only as “The Jackal.” Lawrence comes across a course American con-man named Freddy (Norbert Leo Butz), deduces Freddy is The Jackal, and initiates a guarded partnership between the two. They join forces with a hilarious scheme that has Freddy posing as Lawrence’s deranged brother to fend off one of Lawrence’s past victims (who NOT Sherie Rene Scott—when does she show up?) As much as Freddy and Lawrence enjoyed their collab, they realize the Riviera’s con-man economy can only support one of them. They make a wager: they will select a target and whoever is the first to swindle her out of $50,000 gets to stay while the other will leave town. (Have they not seen Guys and Dolls or My Fair Lady? Don’t they know that making a bet on a woman in a musical never ends out like they think it will?) When they hear that a soap heiress, Christine Colgate is coming to town, they decide to make her their mark. A crowd gathers, humming and looking upstage in anticipation of Christine’s arrival, only for a woman in the crowd (Sherie Rene Scott, finally) to turn around and say, “oh, that’s me” before launching into an infectious and charming introductory number (“Here I Am” ).
