An Entertaining Murder Mystery...
Paul Cartwright as Lieutenant Frank Cioffi and Debra Stewart as Niki Harris in HCT’s regional premiere of “Curtains”
Murder mystery musical Curtains, which played on Broadway from 2007-2008, is making its regional premiere at Hale Centre Theatre in West Valley City.
The show's plot involves a string of murders taking place behind the scenes of a fictional 1950s cowboy musical, Robbin' Hood. The cast of Robbin' Hood is forced to stay inside the theater while Boston police detective Frank Cioffi unravels the mystery, getting involved with the show and falling in love with ingenue Niki Harris in the process.
HTC puts on a lot of old favorite musicals, so it's refreshing to see them take on a new show. I wouldn't say Curtains is destined to be a classic - the plot would have been a lot more clever if the connections between the main story and the show-within-the-show had been tighter, and the shifts in tone between murder mystery and kitschy 50s musical can be jarring for an audience. However, the show's cast sells the material with energetic performances. Cast standouts were Paul Cartwright, who played Frank Cioffi, and Janae Gibbs Cottam, who played producer Carmen Bernstein.
Curtains features a lot of high-energy musical numbers, the best of which is "Tough Act to Follow." However, the loveliest and potentially most durable songs are the sentimental, wistful "Coffee Shop Nights" and "I Miss the Music."
Like most shows at HTC, Curtains features a flashy, colorful set with a lot of moving parts. Seeing what set designer Kacey Udy has put together for musical number "In the Same Boat" is probably worth the price of a ticket all by itself. Curtains plays Mondays through Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. through Nov. 21.
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