Theatre review: Curtains - A Musical Comedy

Death has been no impediment to opening new shows for lyricist Fred Ebb, who with composer John Kander created the classic musicals Cabaret and Chicago. Ebb died of a heart attack in 2004 leaving Kander to finish the jobs the writing team started.

One of them was The Scottsboro Boys which took the notorious trial of nine African American teenagers who were falsely accused of raping two white women and audaciously framed the story within the style of a minstrel show. It opened to acclaim six years after Ebb’s death, though only four years after his previous show Curtains, which is now receiving its London premiere.

If Scottsboro could not have been more serious, Curtains, an old fashioned whodunnit, feels like the kind of project Kander and Ebb wrote to relax. Were it set on a train instead of a Boston theatre it might have been called Murder on the Orient Express. Here the suspects are not passengers, but the cast and crew of a new musical — with cowboys and hoe-downs — being honed ahead of an intended opening on Broadway. The unexpected climax to one performance arrives when the leading lady is killed during her curtain call.

You could be forgiven for thinking you have walked into a production of Michael Frayn’s farce Noises Off performing a few doors down, at the Garrick Theatre, which finishes its run tomorrow. This is because In both shows much of the action is set behind scenery flats and in the shadowy half-light of backstage. Paul Foster’s production handles these transitions with aplomb.