Coronado Playhouse is reviving the 2007 musical comedy/murder mystery Curtains through March 30. The show is the final collaboration of the great music theater team of composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb (the team was working on The Visit when Ebb died in 2004). After original book author Peter Stone died in 2003, Rupert Holmes completed the job and also contributed additional lyrics.
The site of Curtains is the Colonial Theatre in Boston in 1959. A company is rehearsing a musical called Robbin’ Hood and the Old West before transferring to Broadway. Jessica Cranshsaw, the headliner, is a performer of ostentatiously negligible singing, dancing, and acting talent. During her opening night curtain call Cranshaw falls dead on the stage, the victim of poison.
Arriving at the scene to investigate the murder is Boston police lieutenant Frank Cioffi, who is also a fierce theater fan. He has a tough assignment because there are no clues to the Cranshaw killing and Cioffi must deal with 16 on-stage suspects. To make the lieutenant’s investigation more difficult, two more characters are murdered later in the action. And everyone seems to have a motive,
The show starts with those 16 characters, noisily exclaiming in a shrill one-note manner. The majority of the characters are youngish and for a time I had trouble identifying who was who, especially among the females. One delightful exception is Ria Carey, who plays producer Carmen Bernstein. Carey has a booming no-nonsense vocal delivery that dominates the stage whether she is belting out her songs Ethel Merman-style or making glum comments about her husband’s lack of sexual prowess. It was the performance of the production, pulling the show out of its first act doldrums into the more animated second act.
The Kander and Ebb score covers a broad range of emotions and styles. The hit of the night, unsurprisingly, comes from Carey, who leads the ensemble in a boisterous number called “It’s a Business,” which honors some of the less savory aspects of show business life. The company also collectively belts out “Show People,” which compares favorably with the classic “There’s No Business Like Show Business.” As company songwriter Aaron Fox, Luis Shirlinee strikes the show’s most moving musical moment with the lament “I Miss the Music,” which mourns the absence of his music partner. The score also takes potshots at negative critics in “What Kind of Man?”
Most of the younger members of the cast double as dancers, and choreographer Chelsea Zeffiro puts them through some spritely paces, especially in the second act, which turns into one long production number. The zest of the second act of hoofing is welcome after the confusing opening act, which had too much dialogue and too many characters to digest. A sprinkling of pointed wisecracks raises the level of the dialogue in the second act.
The visual production is mostly unexciting. Lisa Samson‘s costumes are colorful but not particularly attractive and Gordo Ghostway‘s bi-level wooden set is bland. Mashun Tucker‘s lighting includes blackouts that try unsuccessfully to inject some suspense into the action. The first act is intended to end with a shock but from my sightlines the shock is invisible. Thus, an opportunity to send a buzz through the audience at the intermission was lost. And the end of the show, which attempts to reveal the solutions to the murders, is nonsense, but put that on the show and not the performers.
Possibly Curtains is too ambitious for the resources available to director Elissa Russell. Some key characters are underperformed. David Hyde Pierce won the Tony Award on Broadway for his comic performance as Cioffi, which undoubtedly strengthened the original production, a resource unavailable to the Coronado. Still, Ria Carey did her part to save the production.
photos by Ken Jacques
Curtains
Coronado Playhouse, 1835 Strand Way
Thurs & Fri at 8; Sat at 2 & 8; Sun at 2
ends on March 30, 2025
for tickets ($27-$45), call 619.435.4856 or visit Coronado Playhouse
