Rocky Mountain Rep’s ‘Dirty Rotten Scoundrels’ pulls off the con

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is a fizzy Grand Lake getaway with charm, laughs and a few rough edges.

If the heat along the Front Range has started to feel like a personal attack, Grand Lake offers an appealing escape: cooler air, lake views and, at Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre, a gleaming musical about professional liars.

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the second production in Rocky Mountain Rep’s 2026 summer repertory season, may be set on the sun-drenched French Riviera, but it fits surprisingly well in this mountain town. Director Michael Querio jokes in his program note that “there’s something fitting about staging a story of sun-drenched Mediterranean glamour and magnificent fakery here in the Rockies — where the only con anybody’s running is convincing themselves they’re not winded at this altitude.”

That line gets at the appeal of the production. The show is artificial by design: all champagne fizz, false identities, fake accents and theatrical swindles. Seen on its second performance, the staging still had a few wrinkles to smooth out. Some scenic transitions dragged, the band occasionally overpowered the singers and a few musical cues needed more snap. Even so, the essential con was already working.

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Josh Kellman and Mitchell Lewis in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre. | Photo: RDGPhotography

A polished scam with a few rough edges

With a book by Jeffrey Lane and music and lyrics by David Yazbek, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is based on the 1988 film starring Michael Caine and Steve Martin, though its lineage reaches back to the 1964 comedy Bedtime Story. No familiarity with either film is required. The plot is simple enough: Lawrence Jameson, a suave, high-class con man, has made a comfortable living fleecing wealthy women on the Riviera. His tidy little empire is threatened by the arrival of Freddy Benson, a scrappy American hustler whose schemes are far less refined but no less effective.

Lawrence, played by Josh Kellman, begins the evening in a slightly faded state of ease. He is elegant, practiced and a little bored by how easy the game has become. Kellman’s opening number, “Give Them What They Want,” was swallowed by the sound mix on Saturday, and the accent work made some of his lyrics difficult to catch at first, but as the show’s action picks up, his performance sharpens significantly.

The production jolts fully awake with the arrival of Mitchell Lewis as Freddy Benson. Lewis has the kind of loose, swaggering command that makes chaos look choreographed. His Freddy is vulgar, ambitious and magnificently shameless, whether he is dreaming of “Great Big Stuff,” contorting himself into the grotesque invented brother Ruprecht or playing a supposedly paralyzed war hero whose condition becomes the setup for one of the show’s funniest scams. Lewis commits with his whole body, especially in the physical comedy, and his singing has the force needed to cut through Yazbek’s brassy, busy score.

The central pleasure of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is watching two performers with very different comic energies try to outmaneuver each other. Kellman’s Lawrence is at his best when Freddy’s unruly presence forces him to drop the smooth mask and improvise. Lewis, meanwhile, understands that Freddy should never seem as stupid as he pretends to be. The character’s appetites may be ridiculous, but his instincts are sharp.

Mitchell Lewis and the ensemble in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre. | Photo: RDGPhotography

Broadway flash in a 300-seat house

Rocky Mountain Rep’s intimate stage gives the production charm, but this musical asks a lot of the space. Scenic designer Cody Tellis Rutledge frames the action with a gold proscenium-like structure and staggered arches that give the stage a sense of Riviera grandeur. A projected skyline, distant village and moonlit backdrop create an elegant postcard image, while the many pieces of furniture and set dressing — a desk and globe in Lawrence’s villa, a hotel bed, fruit, ashtrays and other details — help each location feel specific.

That abundance comes with a cost. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels has the location-hopping structure of a movie, and the production leans into that variety with frequent scenic changes. On Saturday, the sheer number of scene changes repeatedly interrupted the musical’s comic momentum. They will likely tighten as the run continues, but at this performance, the stop-and-start rhythm worked against the farce.

Christopher Rice-Thomson’s choreography is one of the production’s major assets, particularly in the smaller and more focused numbers. Yazbek’s score moves through a wide range of styles, from Broadway razzle-dazzle to Western pastiche to tango-inflected seduction, and Rice-Thomson gives the cast plenty of comic business to play. When the full ensemble floods the stage, however, the movement can feel cramped on the tight stage.

Ethan Newman’s lighting design helps keep the production buoyant, bathing the stage in blues, greens and pinkish purples that suit the show’s glossy vacation-fantasy mood. Lili Federico’s projection design is also smartly integrated, sometimes fleshing out locations and sometimes adding punchy visual accents, as in “Great Big Stuff,” without overwhelming the performers.

Josh Kellman, Lydia Diekmann and Mitchell Lewis in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels at Rocky Mountain Repertory Theatre. | Photo: RDGPhotography

Cast that’s fluent in foolishness

The supporting cast adds much of the evening’s comic texture. George Lorimer brings dry amusement to André Thibault, Lawrence’s ally and the local chief of police, though his French accent was consistently difficult to parse. Megan Opalinski is a delight as Muriel Eubanks, the wealthy American romantic who keeps orbiting Lawrence’s schemes until she finds herself caught in a very different kind of affair with André.

Maura Rose Pawelko makes a strong impression as Jolene Oakes, an Oklahoma heiress so aggressively self-involved that Lawrence can barely get a con started before she has dragged him into her own fantasy. Her “Oklahoma?” number lands as one of the evening’s best set pieces, a burst of Western absurdity that Pawelko sells with total conviction.

Lydia Diekman arrives near the end of the first act as Christine Colgate, the so-called “soap queen” who becomes the subject of Lawrence and Freddy’s wager: whoever can extract $50,000 from her first gets to stay on the Riviera, while the loser leaves town. Diekman leans into Christine’s bright-eyed innocence without making her dull, and her vocal performance gives the role the lift it needs. The character’s final turn is especially satisfying because Diekman has planted just enough intelligence beneath the sweetness all along.

Unlike Shrek, RMRT’s first show of the summer, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is not a family musical. Its humor is raunchy, its jokes are adult and its worldview assumes everyone is working an angle, making it a better fit for grown-ups looking for a summer comedy with old-school showmanship and a contemporary comic edge.

It also makes a strong case for Rocky Mountain Rep itself. The company’s 300-seat Grand Avenue theater was nearly full Saturday night, with locals from Grand Lake, Granby, and Winter Park mixed in with a few theater pilgrims like myself from further away, and I’m pleased to report that the two-hour drive from Denver and back felt justified.

Sure, the production still needs to tighten the mechanics of the con: cleaner transitions, sharper musical cues and more consistent accent work. Yet when Lewis, Kellman and Diekman are trading schemes under Newman’s jewel-toned lights, the show’s a blast.

By the time the last con is sprung, the Rocky Mountain Rep has pulled off the most important trick of all: making the audience happy to be taken for a wild ride.