Curtains. Ahmanson Theatre. 7/25/06.

First of all, this was the first preview of Curtains, two weeks before its official opening night, reviews, etc. That said, I thought it was a wonderfully fun show with superb actors that will do quite well on Broadway. It's "a new backstage murder mystery musical comedy" written by Kander and Ebb and Rupert Holmes, and while it isn't as dark and wonderful as Chicago or Cabaret, it is a good, solid musical comedy.

One of the best things about this show was the cast, including but not limited to David Hyde Pierce. I absolutely loved Karen Ziemba as lyricist Georgia Hendricks. It was so nice to see a female lead who wasn't an ingenue and I was profoundly disappointed when she had a much smaller role in the second act. The other actor who stole the show was Edward Hibbert as the flamboyant director of the play within the play. These two amazing, experienced Broadway actors really made the show for me. Jill Paice as Niki Harris, the ingenue and David Hyde Pierce's love interest, was the least interesting lead in the cast. She's pretty and talented, but fairly bland; she can't hold a candle to her costars.

Curtains is a murder mystery on the set of a pre-Broadway musical, Robbin' Hood, which opens it up for several fun songs about show business and some good solid spoofing of Oklahoma and Annie Get Your Gun. Rob Ashford's choreography was quite reminiscent of recent Broadway revivals of these two shows in a brilliant sort of way. I would have liked the commentary on other Broadway shows to be a little bit sharper, but in general the whole production was a good-natured celebration of Broadway theater, done by people who know and love it.

My favorite song was "The Woman's Dead," which I thought was hilarious and brilliant. Overall, there are a few structural problems with the show that might get worked out during previews. The songs within Robbin' Hood were fairly bland but fun. I wasn't hooked by the first production number - I thought the show started off slowly, but hooked me in the second number with "What Kind of Man?," a "Fugue for Tinhorns" style number about theater critics. Similarly, The curtain call should be bigger and more fun and give the audience more of an opportunity to stand and clap. Ending with a reprise of the love song seems a mistake to me. Overall, I thought this show was totally fun and I laughed out loud frequently. I can't wait to see how it develops.