The Collingswood Excelcior Theatre Company is proud to be one of the first area companies to stage the musical comedy whodunnit, Curtains.  From the creators of Chicago and Cabaret, this hilarious send-up of backstage murder mystery plots recently completed a successful run on Broadway starring David Hyde Pierce and Debra Monk.

Featuring brisk, witty dialogue and funny and beautiful songs, Curtains is set in Boston’s Colonial Theatre in 1959.  The plot follows the fallout when the egregiously untalented leading lady, faded film star Jessica Cranshaw, a triple threat - she can't sing, act, or dance (or remember when to say her lines), collapses during her opening night curtain call of the aspiring Broadway production Robbin' Hood of the Old West.  

The reviews of Robbin' Hood are bad, and the show has lost its star. Divorced songwriting team Aaron Fox and Georgia Hendricks, together with the show's naive financial backer, Oscar Shapiro, and Carmen Bernstein, the hard-bitten co-producer (with her philandering husband, Sidney), bemoan the situation.  The show's flamboyant director, Christopher Belling, has an idea: Georgia can sing, and she used to act, and she knows the show perfectly. She would be a far better leading lady than Cranshaw was, although that is not saying much.

News comes that Cranshaw is dead, and more than that, she has been murdered.   Homicide detective Frank Cioffi, a starstruck amateur community theatre actor, is called in to solve the case.  The cast and crew are all suspects as Cioffi sequesters them in the theatre while he conducts the investigation.  Meanwhile, he offers advice on fixing what’s wrong with the show while simultaneously falling in love with one of the show’s leading actresses.  Even while subsequent murders are occuring, Cioffi’s obsession with the show nearly overtakes his mission to solve the case.   

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