Everyone knows I love a genre specific musical. For example, some of my favorite recent musicals have been in the horror genre such as Evil Dead: The Musical and Heathers. I also love comedies, mysteries and of course romances. However, I also enjoy musicals that can manage to be mashups of several genres. This keeps me guessing as an audience member and can be a lot of fun to watch. Such is the case with the musical Curtains, which I finally got a chance to see at Heritage Theater this weekend. I love Heritage, and this is another charming night of community theater from them.

The story of Curtains is ostensibly a murder mystery but it becomes more than that because all the crime and detective work occurs behind the scenes of a Broadway musical being put on in Boston. The musical in question is called Robbin’ Hood of the Old West and this gives an old fashioned quality to any of the songs that are part of the show within a show such as “Wide Open Spaces,” “Thataway,” and “In the Same Boat” (the latter which we hear 4 different times throughout the show.) Then we have the songs about the crimes and investigation like “He Did It,” and “The Man is Dead.” Finally we have the songs about the company members themselves such as “Show People” and “It’s a Business.” One of my favorites is “I Miss the Music” sung by the show composer Aaron who misses writing with his wife Georgia.

As you can see Curtains has a lot going on so director Lindy Combe wisely keeps the production as simple as possible. I love that Heritage still uses all handmade where so many companies their size are using projections and AI. I also like that they use the entire space into the audience to help tell the story. I could have used even more of that to be honest. My favorite setpiece (set designer Jess Tarbet) was probably the old west saloon backdrop for “Thataway.” This uniquely captures not just a saloon but a saloon in a Broadway musical like Annie Get Your Gun.

In some ways this musical is ideal for community theaters because it gives so much for both the ensemble and individual soloists to do. The cast at Heritage is led by Spot Beecher as Lt Frank Cioffi and he’s a lot of fun in the role. Other standouts are Ali Arbuckle as Carmen Bernstein and R Henry Bennett IV as the snooty British director Christopher Belling. The nice thing about a show like Curtains is most of the songs are within the grasp of an amateur company and they sing them well here.

I’m not sure what the folks at Heritage could have done because the transitions were pretty fast but the show did feel long. That said, I was also at the end of a 2 day, 5 show, marathon event with my friend Jacks in town, so fatigue in Act 2 may be more on me than them. There are times when the backtrack felt a little loud and overpowered the singers and like I said, they could have come out into the audience even more. In the end, however, I found Curtains to be a charming night of community theater. I’m grateful to Heritage for helping me check this show off of my bucket list. It is playing through September 12th and tickets can be purchased here.

Curtains is a musical with music by John Kander (who also wrote Chicago and Cabaret) and lyrics by Kander, Fred Ebb and Rupert Holmes. Holmes wrote the book based on the original book and concept by playwright Peter Stone. It first premiered on Broadway in 2007 and on the West End in 2019. David Hyde Pierce infamously won the Best Actor Tony for Curtains over Raul Esparza which I will never forgive the Tonys for…

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