It's Curtains for Melissa!

As The Production Company’s second offering for 2016, Curtains prepares to open at the State Theatre this Saturday August 20^th, Melissa Langton takes time out to talk to Coral Drouyn.

There’s an old Music Hall line that goes “I’ve got a rod in my pocket and it’s curtains for you. You know why? It’s a curtain rod!” Yes folks, we really did laugh at lines like that back in the 1950s, and years before that. Given the terrible pun in the joke it’s not hard to figure out that The Production Company’s next musical is a Whodunnit with vaudeville overtones.

Kander and Ebb, responsible for two of the most successful musicals of the 20^th Century – Chicago and Cabaret – turned again to the letter C for Curtains, though this one didn’t hit Broadway until 2006; and it garnered eight Tony nominations, with David Hyde Pierce winning Best Lead Actor in a Musical. Though the project was originated by Peter Stone, the book was completely rewritten by the great Rupert Holmes; yes – THAT Rupert Holmes - who gave us The Pina Colada song, and many clever musicals, like The Mystery of Edwin Drood ( now there’s a show for the Production Company).

Fast forward 10 years and we finally get to see this tongue in cheek backstage murder mystery from August 20^th for only 10 performances at the Melbourne Art Centre. It’s the first - and quite probably the last - professional production of the show in Australia, and Director Roger Hodgman has assembled a magnificent cast, including the marvellous Melissa Langton, who plays an ascerbic – or downright bitchy - Broadway producer – a possible love child of Bea Arthur and Angelica Huston from Smash.

“It’s a brilliant cast,” she tells me. “Simon Gleeson is funny - really funny. Audiences who know him mostly as Valjean in Les Misérables will be amazed. We all know that fabulous voice, but I think even Simon is surprised by his gift for comedy.”

Along with Melissa and Simon are such household names as John Wood and Colin Lane, along with music theatre luminaries like Lucy Maunder, Nicki Wendt and Alex Rathgeber.

Melissa herself is one of our most diverse performers, winning awards for her cabarets, killing audiences as part of The Fabulous Singlettes, and garnering rave reviews from critics (myself included) for her character work on stage. Last year she was part of the jazz quartet in the marvellous production of City Of Angels from the Lifelike Company.

“I love Jazz singing so much,” she says, “that when I came off from the prologue on opening night, I thought for a moment ‘this has to be the highlight of my career, I should stop now’.”

Thankfully that feeling didn’t last, and this time Melissa has a meaty role she can really get her teeth into.

“I’m resigned to the fact that I get the character roles, but that means I also get the big belty numbers to sing. So often those roles can be two dimensional – but not this time.”

So what makes Curtains special? Melissa thinks for a moment.

“Well, for one thing, it’s got a terrific book,” she says. “Rupert Holmes is such a great writer; he’s done several novels and at least half a dozen shows. He knows how to construct a story and create characters that aren’t just two-dimensional. So many shows now are sung through - its all about the music and the book always suffers.”

It doesn’t hurt that the score is by Kander and Ebb, though does it?

“Absolutely not!” Melissa retorts. “I mean, they didn’t just write two stupendous shows in Chicago and Cabaret, plus many others like Flora the Red Menace and The Visit, they wrote the anthem New York, New York for the Scorsese film; and also Maybe This Time for Liza Minelli in the film of Cabaret, and How Lucky Can You Get for Barbra Streisand in “Funny Lady” and even My Colouring Book, which is an iconic pop song. They are master craftsman.”

I ask Melissa if there’s a role she has never played that she would love to and she doesn’t hesitate to respond.

“Well of course it would be in a Kander and Ebb show, and I’d love to play Billy Flynn in Chicago. You didn’t say it had to be a female role.”

Now that’s something I would love to see, but for now we get to see her do her very talented thing as Carmen, the producer, in Curtains, with a host of co-stars – and that’s great news for Music Theatre tragics like myself.