Curtains
 

New B/W show, David Hyde Pierce/ you know Fraiser's brother. My daughter's & I loved it. It's not deep. it's just fun. Really fun!!

Oh! Go see it.

It didn't get very good reviews in the Times yesterday. Glad you enjoyed it.

The reviews, in general, were not very good.

I saw it in Los Angeles this summer and really enjoyed it. I'm not sure how much work has been done to it since, but there has only been one rather minor cast replacement.

In a way I have to agree with Ben Brantley of the New York Times (and you don't know how painful it is for me to agree with him). It just never fully reached its potential or "wow" factor in the same way that Drowsey Chaperone does -- at least for me. Of course reveiews are a funny thing. Reading his review you see an awful lot of good and funny things about the show. So perhaps you shouldn't care if it reached it's full potential or the fine points of not accurately showing what dance numbers in the 50's were really like. Maybe they were funnier this way?

The bottom line -- if you enjoyed it, that's the main thing. I enjoyed it too.

I saw Curtains last week in NY and I didnt care for it. For comedy my money would be on Spamelot or Avenue Q which IMO were much better.

Panhandle, out of curiosity have you seen Drowsy Chaperone? I suspect that those who find the humor in "Chaperone" would also like Curtains. Both sort of "spoof" big musicals and are sort of "Broadway musicals" inside joke. I know some people have not enjoyed Drowsy Chaperone, and I suspect those same people would not enjoy Curtains -- maybe that's an unfair assumption, however.

NeoPatrick
That was my point. We enjoyed it. Yes it was corny, it's ment to be, but that was part of the fun. If you go into the theater looking for literary award winner your going to be disappointed. Sometimes it's nice to just be entertained & not have to work at it.

No I havent seen Drowsy Chaperone.
My feelings about Curtains stem more from the writing. Some of the songs were good but I just never really felt like I cared about the characters and at the end they finally just dropped the story in your lap. A "whodunnit" IMO should give clues and let the audience try to figure it out. I enjoyed the show but thought it fell short in the writing and character developement.
FYI other shows we have seen the last few years...Phantom, Chicago, Les Mis
Avenue Q, Lion King, Rent, Spamelot,The Producers, Wicked, Mama Mia, and Movin Out.

For those who want to read the summaries of the major reviews, here they are.

http://www.broadwayworld.com/pulse/

Is this show similar to an older show called The Mystery of Edwin Drood? I saw it in college and then later at a community theater.

The two shows have absolutely no relationship to each other.

Thanks for the www.broadwayworld.com link--a very good source of Broadway information.

The New Yorker (April 2) has a good review of Curtains.

Thanks, claire. I had a hard time finding that online as Curtains wouldn't work in their search and I didn't see it in their table of contents for last issue. Finally found it.
But here is a link for anyone who wants to read it.

http://tinyurl.com/2elvqm

HowardR, it's not quite true that the shows have no relationship to each other. The book writer is the same for both! So they are related in a "six degrees" kind of way :) But the shows themselves are very different.

I personally enjoyed Curtains, and while the reviews were mixed, very few seem to be all-out bad. I think that if someone is looking for a big musical and an old-fashioned good time, they'll enjoy it. And both David Hyde Pierce and Debra Monk do a fantastic job!

Yes! Great description “an old-fashioned good time“,.
An added plus.. my 18 & 20 yrs old daughters totally enjoyed it. It was one of the highlights of their trip.
No matter how sophisticated we all like to think our children are, unless they have had more exposure to live theater than most young adults, you can’t compete with all the techno entertainment they are used to. I knew we had a winner when my 18 yr old started texting friends after the show.

While I've sort of agreed the show doesn't quite reach the heights I was hoping for, it sure is fun. Reading through a lot of reviews I tend to ignore things like "the jokes are old", "it's been done before", and "nothing new about this show". When I go to see an old fashioned fun musical, I could care less that it isn't breaking new ground. Sometimes the old ground is pretty darn good.