_THE THIN MAN; David Hyde Pierce plays a musical-loving gumshoe in Curtains.(Brief article)

Byline: Adam Green

Two years ago, sitcom prince David Hyde Pierce reinvented himself as a song-and-dance man, giving a hilarious turn in Spamalot as the poltroonish Sir Robin. This month, he returns to Broadway in Curtains, a breezy hybrid of murder mystery and backstage musical, with a score by the legendary Cabaret and Chicago songwriters John Kander and Fred Ebb. Set in Boston in 1959, the show opens with the onstage murder of a talentless leading lady in a musical with severe out-of-town troubles. Leading a top-notch cast that includes Debra Monk, Karen Ziemba, and Edward Hibbert, Hyde Pierce plays Lieutenant Frank Cioffi, a stagestruck gumshoe brought in to solve the case. "I've done a little community theater myself," he tells the suspects. "In A Midsummer Night's Dream, my Bottom was very well received." The plot revolves around two questions: Whodunit? and, more important, Can the show be fixed in time to open ...