Kooky show of a cheesy show

NEW YORK - It'll be a long time before they ring down the final curtain on

Curtains

. The new Broadway murder-mystery musical, which opened Thursday night with a front-line cast, is 21/2-hours of old-fashioned escape.

It boils over with polished songs by John Kander and the late Fred Ebb, the same team who wrote Chicago, and more than one is a showstopper. The gifted director, Scott Ellis, who could probably squeeze elegance from a Punch-and-Judy show, inspires Curtains with a big-time Broadway sensibility.

Curtains doesn't have a serious second, thank goodness, because any teachable moment would be utterly out of place. The musical's a play within a play, a kooky show about a cheesy show. The cast is trying out a real dog in Boston, an updated version of Robin Hood, with a leading lady who's execrable on opening night until she drops dead stage rear. Her demise alone lifts her performance several notches.

"The woman's dead," intones the unmoved cast in its nasty eulogy. "She's dead and gone. They closed her mouth and shipped her south. . . . She had no voice; she had no wits; she had no brains; she just had tits."

Maybe so, but she had something else: an enemy. She was murdered, says the cop who comes to the theater to lead an investigation, quarantines the place, and begins interviewing the cast, crew and production team. Oh, by the way, he says, he's done a little amateur theater himself - whereby he slowly proceeds to fall for a cast member and also to reshape the crummy show.

The police lieutenant with several agendas is cannily played by stage veteran David Hyde Pierce. After more than a decade on TV as Frasier's brother, he's dived into musical theater with a delightful passion. His own leading lady is the charming Jill Paice, who plays the show's ingenue, and together they perform the sweetest current song on Broadway: "Tough Act to Follow," a send-up of every glam let's-make-music-together number you've seen, driven by Rob Ashford's sparkling choreography.

The entire company - a cast of 31, with the tallest ensemble of male dancers I've ever seen, towering over the ladies - is swell. Two standouts: Broadway belter Debra Monk as the producer and a perfectly timed Edward Hibbert as the effete director. In a show that flows with great lines, Monk and Hibbert have the best.

Curtains comes to Broadway at the time a warhorse musical - The Producers, also a show about another show - will close next month after 2,535 performances, about a billion bucks in sales and a dozen Tonys, the most in history. And Curtains competes with the celebrated musical The Drowsy Chaperone, yet another a goofy show within a show.

People may whine about the state of the American musical theater, but it sure seems like musicals about musicals are working the box office overtime.

Music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb, book by Rupert Holmes, directed by Scott Ellis, choreography by Rob Ashford.

The cast: David Hyde Pierce (Lieutenant Frank Cioffi), Debra Monk, (Carmen), Karen Ziemba (Georgia), Jason Danieley (Aaron), Jill Paice (Niki), Edward Hibbert (Christopher).

Playing at the Al Hirschfield Theatre, 302 W. 45th St., New York City. Tickets: $61.50-$111.50. Information: 1-800-432-7250 or www.curtainsthemusical.com.EndText