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rhuCurtains was an enjoyable enough evening. It benefits from a superb cast putting in all they've got to sell a show that, well, doesn't deserve it. David Hyde Pierce certainly demonstrates his Tony-worthy talent -- he sings and dances wonderfully; he so thoroughly inhabits his role that at no point did I feel like I was watching Niles Crane. (Dick van Dyke, maybe, but not Niles Crane.) Edward Hibbert, on the other hand, was Edward Hibbert.
The show-within-the-show is supposed to start off bad, but it doesn't actually get much better as the evening progresses. The music and lyrics are adequate, barely. The book is quite funny and the plot pacing is well done, although I was reminded throughout of Accomplice.
Gripe: Near the opening scene, four characters are purportedly reading four different newspapers. And the fronts have the appropriate nameplates. But the backs of the four newspapers are identically laid out.
I noticed a red light on the conductor's podium at the start of the show. It wasn't until the curtain call that I realized what it was --- when the curtain is down but the conductor needs to know when the folks onstage are ready, they turn the red light on to tell him to wait. (Like the holding lights in the subway that tell the conductor not to close the doors because there's a connecting train arriving.) Clever.
The show-within-the-show is supposed to start off bad, but it doesn't actually get much better as the evening progresses. The music and lyrics are adequate, barely. The book is quite funny and the plot pacing is well done, although I was reminded throughout of Accomplice.
Gripe: Near the opening scene, four characters are purportedly reading four different newspapers. And the fronts have the appropriate nameplates. But the backs of the four newspapers are identically laid out.
I noticed a red light on the conductor's podium at the start of the show. It wasn't until the curtain call that I realized what it was --- when the curtain is down but the conductor needs to know when the folks onstage are ready, they turn the red light on to tell him to wait. (Like the holding lights in the subway that tell the conductor not to close the doors because there's a connecting train arriving.) Clever.