The mock-Gilbert and Sullivan musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is now playing on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre, presenting murder most foul set to music most merry. The musical opens like an Edwardian valentine onto the story of an Englishman named Monty Navarro, who is eighth in line for a dukedom.
Navarro, played by Bryce Pinkham, figures that his chances of outliving the other eight characters are pretty slim, so he decides to bump them off, one by one. These eight high-born relatives are all played with varying degrees of haughtiness or silliness by Tony Award-winning Jefferson Mays, of I Am My Own Wife and Best Man fame.
Navarro is determined not just to commit murder, but to send these dreadful characters to their doom in the most creative and ingenious ways possible.
The felonious mayhem that ensues is set to music reminiscent of English music-hall ballads and G&S patter songs--written by Steven Lutvak with lyrics by Robert L. Freedman. Critic Charles Isherwood of the New York Times said, "Mr. Lutvak and Mr. Freedman may be reworking forms that have been previously established...but their score still establishes itself as one of the most accomplished (and probably the most literate) to be heard on Broadway in the past dozen years or so, since the less rigorous requirements of pop songwriting have taken over."
But director Darko Tresnjak never lets the cartoonish violence overwhelm the musical's charms. As Isherwood says more, "Despite the high body count, this delightful show will lift the hearts of all those who've been pining for what sometimes seems a lost art form: musicals that match streams of memorable melody with fizzily witty turns of phrase."
More information about A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder is available at agentlemansguidebroadway.com. Performances at the Kerr Theatre will run until June 2014.
