"We're a special kind of people known as show people," goes a self-congratulatory song in Curtains, the John Kander-Fred Ebb-Rupert Holmes-Peter Stone backstage murder-mystery musical that has finally opened on Broadway after over a decade in the making. What the song doesn't say, while glorifying one of the most demanding and often most disillusioning careers imaginable, is that some show people do learn how to put on a damn good show whenever they set their minds to it. Kander and Ebb revealed the secret in Chicago when they advised, "Give 'em the old razzle dazzle -- razzle dazzle 'em."

So, as they've been raising Curtains for Broadway consumption, the show's creators -- minus the late[...]