Independently, musicals and theatrical who-dun-its demand quite a bit from their audiences in terms of suspension of disbelief. But throw the genres together and you’ve got a recipe for absurdity, and comedy, though of a less serious order. PCPA’s production of Curtains, showing at the Solvang Theater June 17 through July 3, raises the bar for musicals while demanding very little of its audience.
As suggested by the title, the show is heavy on metanarrative commentary; the characters are the cast, crew, and financial backers of an off-Broadway musical called Robbin’ Hood of the Old West. The curtains open on the final scene of the first incarnation of Robbin’ Hood, a play so poorly written and acted that PCPA seems to be sharing a joke with the audience, asking ‘aren’t we a thousand times better than this type of theater’ while knowing the answer the entire time.
On the one hand, Curtains is a play built on stereotypes—the songwriting team that broke up when their marriage failed reunited for one last show, the wealthy patroness who makes endless jokes at her husband’s expense, the overbearing ingénue desperate to climb her way to the top, the impossibly gay theater director, etc. etc.—but it’s so impeccably staged that you forgive the stereotypes or, better yet, learn to love them.
And if Niki Harris is yet another sweet, beautiful, and talented performer, if a bit dim, well, you forgive her that because her company is right to rave about her star quality. And it’s impossible for a character to have star quality without a truly solid performance, in this case from Karin Hendricks. At the opposite end of the spectrum Bambi Bernét (Natasha Harris) can’t seem to convince anyone that she’s got what it takes to make it in show business—not the director who seems to take special delight in insulting her, not even her mother who makes liberal use of every available opportunity to publicly humiliate her. And she’s so eager, so aggressive in her pursuit of success, that it’s kind of fun to watch her get slapped down. It’s even kind of nice to watch her succeed, finally.
On the downside, Cioffi’s chronic inability to recall that he is supposed to be solving a murder sometimes crosses the fine line between comedy and inanity. And the ending is really, truly, beyond absurd. To be fair, most audiences at a who-dun-it are expecting to hear the detective twist logic like taffy. But the drive to resolve the musical amicably stretches the writers in a direction that leaves everything a little too intact considering everything that has happened. That’s all that can be revealed of the ending, as the ensemble wisely concludes their performance on an admonishment “not to reveal who killed who…or it just might be curtains for you.”
Arts Editor Ashley Schwellenbach is a hard act to follow. Send your who-dun-it theories to aschwellenbach@newtimesslo.com.
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