{alltv} 'Curtains' review: Soap opera veteran plays a singing policeman

After the soap opera "Guiding Light" was extinguished in 2009, Robert Newman didn't have to do much searching for his tomorrows.

"Now I could return to doing musicals, which I've always loved," says the actor, who had played Joshua Lewis in thousands of episodes. "In fact, I'm a lot like my character in 'Curtains,' who loves musicals, too."

That's Lt. Frank Cioffi of the Boston Police Department. Although he's busy solving the murder of a star of a Broadway-bound show, he spends his vacations doing community theater.

"I used to do theater, too, with my time off from 'The Guiding Light,' " says Newman, who stars in the Paper Mill Playhouse production of "Curtains" that opens this weekend. "I'd perform a musical — 'A Little Night Music' in Pittsburgh, 'Shenandoah' at the Barn Theatre in (Port Sanilac) Michigan. Luckily the producer at the 'Guiding Light' always understood, and wrote me out of episodes — although I was never officially killed off."

Newman didn't start out as a musical actor. "While attending California State College in Northridge," he says, "I was a psychology major who took acting as an elective. I found that both (psychologists and actors) study human behavior and try to figure out why we do what we do. So soon I was reading Eugene O'Neill and Tennessee Williams in a school that had a great musical theater program, too. And suddenly I was playing Sky Masterson and Conrad Birdie."

In October 1981, Newman came to New York to do musicals. "But I auditioned for the 'Guiding Light,' just for the experience," he says. "The first time I ever went before a TV camera was that audition."

Yet he got the part, and signed a three-year contract. And while he did stray from the series for a couple of two-year breaks, he remained with it for 28 years, until its dying day in September 2009.

Of course, being (literally) a matinee idol to millions netted him quite a few fans.

"And whenever they come up to me," he says, "I always tell them, 'Thank you for putting my kids through college.' "

Looking back, Newman remembers those meetings when writers and producers would tell him what would happen to Joshua Lewis.

"I'd say, 'Oh, that's very interesting' when I was feeling, 'You've got to be kidding.' We did a story where I went back to the Civil War days through time travel. Another had one of my wives coming back from the dead. And then there was the time when my wife Reva was dead, but we brought her back to life by having her cloned."

He stops to laugh and shake his head. "When my soap opera pals and I got together to compare crazy story lines from our various shows, I always won."

Reva was portrayed by Kim Zimmer, who co-stars in "Curtains" as an avaricious producer. So the daytime stars are now performing at night.

"What really killed soaps," Newman says, "was the O.J. Simpson trial (in 1995). People who watched soaps switched to the trial instead to see the real thing.

"Plenty of soaps went off the air then, and we were lucky to stay around for almost 15 more years."

In other words, a real murder mystery is partially responsible for Newman appearance, now, in a fictional murder mystery.

Curtains

Where: Paper Mill Playhouse, 22 Brookside Drive, Millburn

When: Through May 22. Wednesdays at 7:30 p.m., Thursdays at 1:30 and 7:30 p.m., Fridays at 8 p.m. Saturdays at 1:30 and 8 p.m., Sundays at 1:30 and 7 p.m.

How much: $25 to $92. Call (973) 376-4343 or visit papermill.org.