By Charles Jarrett
This week the curtain rises in Walnut Creek on a very funny, very silly superficial spoof of mystery theater and musical theatre combined in Kander and Ebb’s wild and wacky 2007 Broadway success, “Curtains”. Then, down the road in Concord, the Butterfield 8 Theatre Company is exploring Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia”, a marvelously complex and comic tale of a mystery in mathematical evolution being debated and solved by allowing us to step back into time, to see the real tale unfold, while modern day Sherlocks dig deep and initially come up shallow!
First, for those who seek little intellectual challenge in their theatrical entertainment, Diablo Theatre Company’s production of “Curtains” has risen this past week in the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, and is guaranteed to be pure entertainment, requiring little effort on your part, other than to just kick back and enjoy!
“Curtains” reveals to the audience a production in progress in the Colonial Theater in Boston; a Broadway-intended musical that is built around a modern western (in fact, a very bad adaptation of the original “Robin Hood” story). As a valiant and upbeat cast proclaims their undying devotion to the” wide open spaces of K-A-N-S-A-S”, the leading lady, a movie star by the name of Jessica Cranshaw (Julie Wall), is seen crashing and burning on a funeral pyre of ineptitude. It quickly becomes obvious in this closing scene of this woeful western, that Ms. Cranshaw cannot perform live, and what’s more, she cannot sing, dance, act or remember her lines and blocking! She is a stage disaster of Titanic proportions, a miscast galactic sized ice glacier crushing down this company’s theatrical landscape, plunging this production right into the Boston Bay - - - taking everyone and everything with it in her “wake”. Not only is Ms. Cranshaw killing the production, but as she makes her curtain call, she, herself, collapses on the stage apron, bringing the curtain down on an ill-fated show.
In the next scene, members of the company’s production team are seen pacing the darkened stage scouring the morning editions of the local Boston newspapers, looking for affirmation and positive reviews, but unfortunately, they read more like obituaries such as the following review in the Boston Globe which says, “if you loved Oklahoma, - - stay there - - as long as Robin Hood is running in Boston!” This fun-filled number addresses the power of the proverbial “critic” on the success or failure of an opening production and the entire cast sings a down and dirty “dirge” to celebrate how much the theatre community typically loves and worships the wit and wisdom of the theater reviewer! “Who’d make a living by killing other people’s dreams - - I mean, what kind of man would take a job like this?” The lyrics are simply too funny, and the best lines are much too acrid and adult to put in print!
In short order, as the actors are packing their physical and intellectual baggage, hoping to forget that this most disastrous episode ever happened in their lives, word comes from the Boston General Hospital that Miss Crenshaw has croaked. To those in the production team, this is seen as a positive turn of events. Perhaps with a new lead and a new production effort, the show can be re-born. The entire cast is coerced into an impromptu memorial celebration by the director, who asks the cast whether they should “ - - observe a minute of silence to match the audience’s response to Jessica’s first number - - oh well – all right, Jessica was a member of our company and now we part company - -”. As they sing their song commemorating her departure, homicide detective Frank Cioffi (Tom Reardon) enters through a rear stage door and announces to the assembled cast, that he has arrived to investigate Jessica’s murder. It becomes abundantly apparent as soon as Cioffi opens his mouth, that he holds professional actors in great esteem, and while revealing his great love of musical theater, he announces that the entire cast must be sequestered within the theater, while he conducts his investigation.
The list of suspects include the “hard-as-nails” female producer, Carmen Bernstein (Jessica Fisher); her philandering husband, Sidney (Tim Johnson); the divorced song-writing team of Aaron Fox (Derrick Silva) and Georgia Hendricks (Amy Nielson); stage manager Johnny Harmon (Jody Black); director Christopher Belling (Paul Plain); ingénue Nikki Harris (Sharon Rietkerk); choreographer Bobby Pepper (Andrew Willis-Woodward) and the overly ambitious chorus line performer, Bambi Bernét (Renee DeWeese).
While the investigation goes on, the company tries to rectify the show’s weak points, re-write the script and re-design some key numbers. Lieutenant Cioffi becomes enamored with the very lovely and not overly bright Nikki Harris and she, as well, with him. More murders occur, just to keep the show interesting and to provide background for more of the fun-filled songs and the really silly plot!
The big question is can Cioffi and Harris fall in love, solve the mystery, save the musical and sell the audience this totally implausible plot before the curtain rises on the re-written show? Well, the only way you will know is to buy your tickets and go!
"Curtains", typical of a Kander and Ebb production, is lots of fun with a couple of really memorable numbers (“Show People”, “What Kind of Man”, “Tough Act To Follow”, “The Woman is Dead”. “He Did It” and “Thinking of Him”) thrown in for good measure. Director Daren A.C. Carollo has brought together a brilliant evening of outrageous entertainment. Choreographer Gia Solari has done a superb job and musical director Chad Runyon not only directs the orchestra with his usual panache, but he even adds his splendid voice to the show in the character of Sacha Iljinsky. Even if there is absolutely nothing that ails ya, this show is bound to make you feel better! “Go see it, and that’s an order!”
“Curtains” only continues through February 28th in the Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts at 1601 Civic Drive in downtown Walnut Creek. Call 943-7469 for reservations or visit their online website at
http://www.lesherartcenter.org/. More information and photographs can be found on the company’s website,
http://www.diablotheatre.org/. Tickets range between $29 and $42 each!
