Here is Richard Valley's Scarlet Street review. It is the non-reveal version. Of course, one never knows what other reviewers will reveal or not reveal and I'll have no control - which is why I rarely read reviews of mysteries. But, I thought you all would appreciate seeing the first:
Bruce Kimmel puts his talent for evoking the past, utilized so winningly in his nostalgic Benjamin Kritzer trilogy, to a sinister new purpose in Writer’s Block, a witty, disturbing murder mystery set in the late 1960s.
Broadway is the setting, and the plot revolves around a new musical called BUS AND TRUCK, a sort of KISS ME KATE combo of backstage antics and show-within-a-show. The year is 1969. We follow the first reading of the script (at which the librettist, songwriter, producer, director, and cast all realize that, while the first act is socko, the second is a lox) to rehearsals in the Bronx, then on to out-of-town tryouts in New Haven and Boston, back to Manhattan for previews, and finally to opening night—where producer Conrad Ballinger steps out on the stage during the curtain calls and dramatically proclaims that a key member of the BUS AND TRUCK production team is dead.
Sound familiar? Producer David Merrick did just that very thing on August 25, 1980, when he announced to the stunned cast and opening-night audience of 42ND STREET that the show’s choreographer and director, Gower Champion, had died. Ah, but here’s the catch—Champion died of a rare blood cancer; the novel’s decedent dies in a fire, the tragic result of falling asleep with a lit cigarette. That’s what the police say, anyway, but librettist Arthur Myerson begins to ponder, and what he ponders is whether the much-loathed, sexually masochistic victim—who threatened Ballinger with the disruption of the show, who seduced and harassed both chorus girl Allison and chorus boy Eddie, who fought bitterly with director Galen Chapman—was murdered.
The events that take place in Writer’s Block are a dizzying, exhilarating blend of fact and fiction. Galen Chapman is, of course, based on Champion (with a flash of Fosse). BUS AND TRUCK’s veteran stars Mary Masters and Robert O’Brien recall Mary Martin and Robert Preston, who actually costarred on Broadway in I DO! I DO! (1966). Songwriter Stanley Sherman is sort of an Even Stephen—namely, Sondheim and Schwartz—but it’s Arthur Myerson who, like Sondheim, loves to play games. Arthur also loves to write song parodies, including one for a musical version of PSYCHO (sung to the tune of “I’m Lovely” from A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO THE FORUM):
I’m Psycho
What I am is Psycho
I’m a little Psycho in my head
Shower
You don’t want to shower
Or within the hour
You’ll be dead.
The novel’s murder isn’t based on an actual crime, but so vividly does Kimmel bring the period to life, so deftly does he weave imaginary events with genuine theater history—Mary Martin’s difficulties remembering her lines, Stephen Schwartz’s conflict with Bob Fosse during the 1972 production of PIPPIN, David Merrick’s shocking revelation—that even the most learned show biz aficionado will wonder how the news of a brash young Broadwayite’s fiery finish ever escaped his knowledge.
Writer’s Block is extraordinarily clever throughout, but never more so than when Kimmel performs some theatrical sleight of hand in a manner that’s positively Hitchcockian. The Master of Suspense, who in such classic thrillers as THE 39 STEPS (1935), STAGE FRIGHT (1950), and TORN CURTAIN (1966) explored the ever deceptive world of the theater, would have smiled. And so will you.
—Richard Valley
