'Curtains,' the final show created by the team of John Kander and Fred Ebb (who also wrote 'Cabaret' and 'Chicago' among other great musicals) is getting its regional premiere by Cincinnati Music Theatre, one of our city's best community theaters, predictable in its high quality with regular productions at the Aronoff Center's Jarson-Kaplan Theatre. The entertaining show has a happy ending, and you'll still be laughing all the way home.  

There are moments in '110 in the Shade' when genuine theatrical impact shines through the difficulties of staging a Broadway musical of only iffy merit with a cast of 16. It's presented on a set designed by Dennis Murphy that communicates the play's mood as well as its time and place: a drought-scourged, worry-scurried prairie village in the 1930s. Farmers are giving up hope of a rain that will save their crops and cattle, just as thirtysomething Lizzie Curry is close to giving up hope of ever finding a husband and having children.