Curtains Play Analysis

“Curtains” is a whodunit mystery musical originally written by Rupert Holmes accompanied with music by John Kander and lyrics by Fred Ebb. It is a play within a play set in Boston. The play, “Robbin hood”, is trying to make it on Broadway, however the leading actress, Jessica Cranshaw, always forgets her cues and lines. She mysteriously dies in the last scene of the show. It is discovered that she was murdered and everyone in the show is a suspect. We then meet Lt. Frank Cioffi, a detective working for the Boston police. He happens to love theatre and develops feelings for Jessica Cranshaw’s understudy, Niki Harris. He informs the cast since they are all suspects they cannot leave the theater until he finds out who the killer is. We meet Boston Globe’s play reviewer, Daryl Grady, who gave the play terrible
He tells the cast that since they have a new female role, Georgia Hendricks the songwriter for Robinn hood, they can try doing the play again, but they only have twenty-four hours to get everything together. The producers, Carmen and Sydney Bernstein are a married couple with different views on the show. Sydney wants to shut the show down while Carmen has faith this show will do very well and is secretly routing for her daughter in the show so anyone doesn’t get suspicious about any favoritism. Soon after, Sydney is murdered at the end of act I. In act II another murder occurs making everyone wary of who did it. The detective has a plan to reveal who the killer is. He has everyone come on stage to recreate the scene where Jessica is killed, he realizes the murderer came up with a bouquet of flowers and inside the flowers there was a pellet gun inside with poisonous pills, which he used to kill Jessica with. The murderer is then revealed making everyone shocked but happy. The show reopens with Georgia as the lead character and Detective Cioffi as Rob Hood who is in a relationship Niki