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The first half of this Broadway season is off to a rough start. Musicals like Big Fish and First Date failed to win the acclaim that so many shows desire, and both will close by the beginning of January. The season has also had its bombs, including Soul Doctor and Let It Be, which both failed to run a full month.
Opening this past Sunday night at the Walter Kerr Theatre, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder is a smashingly funny musical that gives a breath of fresh air to the otherwise dim season.
Gentleman’s Guide is a transplant from successful regional productions, first at San Diego’s Old Globe and then at Hartford Stage. The musical, based on Roy Horniman’s novel, Israel Rank, follows Monty Navarro (Bryce Pinkham) a Victorian-era commoner who discovers he is the ninth in line for the Earldom of Highhurst. He resolves that in order to woo his love, Sibella (Lisa O’Hare) and win the earldom, he must kill the eight relatives standing in his way.
All eight of these kin are played by the wonderful, versatile Jefferson Mays. Mays assumes the identities of these eight relatives in a mad flurry of quick changes and songs, and assumes certain roles in full drag. Interestingly enough, he won his last Tony 10 years ago playing multiple roles in I Am My Own Wife, and is once again generating Tony buzz this season thanks to his new roles. The cast is rounded out by Lauren Worsham, who plays Phoebe, a second love interest of Monty and a cousin of his. They are a perfect balance, with Monty the straight man in a madcap race to eliminate the hilarious Jefferson Mays in every role he assumes.
Music by Steven Lutvak and a book by Robert L. Freedman enhance the performance considerably. These are not the kinds of songs you leave the theater humming, but they do what a good musical score should by enhancing the plot. They also act to introduce the audience to each of Jefferson Mays’s characters in the lead-ups to their respective demises, which often correspond with the end of each musical number.
Linda Cho and Alexander Dodge designed wonderful period costumes and sets, respectively. Of particular interest is the show-within-a-show element, which Dodge’s set accomplishes masterfully. Another proscenium is placed on stage, complete with a classic red curtain. Throughout the show, it opens and shuts as it displays interactive sets where Monty Navarro murders Jefferson Mays’s many characters and dances between his two loves. These small vignettes finish soon after they begin, but they have so many details that one could spend twice as long observing their intricacies and still miss some things.
Finally, director Darko Tresnjak, who has helmed the show since its out-of-town tryouts, has adapted it to fit perfectly in a larger Broadway venue, compared to the smaller in-the-round style of Hartford Stage.
Whether your cup of tea is British accents, songs about murder, a man in drag or a juicy love affair, I encourage students to check out the rush tickets, priced at $35, for this fun and charismatic show.
