Curtains – New Wimbledon Theatre and Touring

Picture: Roy Tan

Curtains continues at the New Wimbledon Theatre, London until 18 January, then on tour until 11 April 2020.

Star rating: four stars ★ ★ ★ ★ ✩

Musical murder mystery Curtains resumed its UK tour in Wimbledon after an unexpected five-week West End run at the Wyndham’s Theatre, rushed in because of the premature closing of another comedy thriller The Man In The White Suit.

Given a rave review then and five stars by Musical Theatre Review colleague Patrick Honoré, it was the penultimate show from the great John Kander/Fred Ebb team, lyricist Ebb having died long before Curtains made it to Broadway in 2007. It ran for 511 performances there but the only previous professional sighting in Britain came on the London Fringe at the late, lamented Landor in 2012.

The reason for reviewing it again so soon is the swapping of 2016 Strictly Come Dancing winner Ore Oduba with Andy Coxon, the original Aaron Fox when the tour opened in Bromley in October and for most of its deserved West End promotion.

The charming Oduba joins star Jason Manford as names who will put bums on seats and he is down for eight of the 11 tour weeks with Coxon scheduled to return to the role in Llandudno, Leicester and High Wycombe.

We know from his winning Strictly partnership with Joanne Clifton that Oduba has tremendous dance skills but we didn’t know the TV presenter could sing as movingly as he does on Curtains’ best ballad ‘I Miss the Music’.

It is sung so eloquently by a man still in love with ex-wife Georgia (Carley Stenson, brilliant in her solo ‘Thinking of Him’) but both songs double as tributes by Kander to lyricist Ebb, his inseparable musical partner for over 40 years.

There are plenty of decent tunes – showbiz ‘in’ numbers like ‘Show People’ and ‘It’s a Business’ – and funny ones too, such as ‘What Kind Of Man?’, a broadside against cruel critics who have the power to wreck a show. But no really memorable ones.

And laugh-out-loud moments with sharp one-liners, ‘in’ jokes and plenty of innuendo. The timing of these barbs by the stage-struck detective, winningly played by Manford, who arrives after the murder of the hopeless leading lady; Samuel Holmes, as the camp English director of Robbin’ Hood, the play within a play; and Rebecca Lock as that show’s ruthless co-producer, is immaculate.

Better known as a stand-up comedian, Manford sings well, particularly the plaintive ‘Coffee Shop Nights’, and scatty though Lieutenant Cioffi is, he somehow manages to solve three murders by the end of this good-hearted romp.

But Cabaret (which returns to Wimbledon next month) and Chicago, Kander and Ebb’s greatest contributions to musical theatre, are hard acts to follow and Curtains, while a fun night out with some great dancing by Alan Burkitt and Emma Caffrey as the chorus girl who thinks she should be leading lady, falls a fair way short of those masterpieces.

At two and three quarter hours, it is over-long and going into the final 20 minutes I was past caring who dunnit.

Director Paul Foster gets everything out of a large cast as does MD Alex Beetschen with his nine-strong band while the big production numbers are superbly choreographed by Alistair David.

Jeremy Chapman