BWW Reviews: Hartford Stage Offers Rare Musical with Comedic Romp, A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER

Heather Ayres, Ken Barnett and Jefferson Mays. Photo: Joan Marcus

A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE & MURDER
Hartford Stage

By Lauren Yarger
Offering its first musical premiere since the 1996-97 season, Hartford Stage presents a tongue-in-cheek, Edwardian romp among the royals in A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder starring Tony-Award-Winner and Connecticut native Jefferson Mays (I Am My Own Wife) as eight different characters. 

Mays plays all eight members of the D'Ysquith family being knocked off in zany ways by the ninth-in-line to the earldom they hold. Monty Navarro (Ken Barnett who starred in last season's February House at Long Wharf) and his mother had been disinherited when she married his undesirable "Castilian" father, so Monty plots revenge. He wins a position in the firm of cousin Asquith D'Ysquith (Mays) and sets upon a murderous plan to eliminate each of the family members standing in his way to the title (including a couple of women, though it isn't clear how they will inherit since royal titles seldom pass to women if men are available. You can read some info about this in the program.) 

With a book by Robert L. Freedman that attempts to evoke the success of the tongue-in-cheek antics of Broadway's The 39 Steps (Director Darko Tresnjak even borrows some of the bits like shaking clothes to simulate gusting wind), each earl bites the dust in humorous ways. (Price Walman, Rachel Izen, Heather Ayres and KendAl Sparks complete the ensemble, playing a myriad of minor characters in the tale, told in flashback form as Monty writes his memoirs in jail on the eve of his execution for murder.) 

The story appears to be an adaptation of the movie "Kind Hearts & Coronets" by Robert Hamer and the 1907 novel "Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman" on which that was based. Neither of these works are credited in the program. Tresnjak does write notes there, however, about some of the process of development (some eight years) for Freedman, who also wrote lyrics, and collaborator, composer Steven Lutvak. Plot points and other details are changed (in the movie, it's a Dukedom and the name is Chalfont) and the ways the family members meet their maker are different, so it's not exactly the same, but star Alec Guinness plays the multiple roles there too in what is pretty much the same story. The musical, receiving its world premiere at Hartford Stage, was developed in part at the 2006 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab and is presented in association with the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego which will present the show next spring. 

Meanwhile, complicating Monty's plans to take his royal seat are romances with his feeling torn between adulterous lust for the beautiful Sibella (Lisa O'Hare), who spurned him to marry a wealthy rival, and his cousin Phoebe (Chilina Kennedy, who delights with a beautiful operatic soprano). All of the action takes place on an ornate proscenium stage designed by Alexander Dodge to accommodate among other things, a beautiful garden where bees attack and a winter wonderland pond where ice-skating turns deadly (and where corny choreography by Peggy Hickey makes a smile – and the ice -- crack). Linda Cho designs costumes that aren't quite true to the period, but which accommodate the choreography. 

Certainly, there are moments of humor. Mays throws himself into each of the roles, the most memorable of which are the creepy Rev. Lord Ezekiel D'Ysquith who takes a header off a tower (in a sewer-tumbling tribute to Javert in Les Mis by Dodge and projection, lighting and sound designers Aaron Rhyne, Philip Rosenberg and Dan Moses Schreier,) and Henry, a double-entendre speaking shy cousin whose duet "Better with a Man" with Monty is a hoot. He also makes us laugh as Lord Aldabert expressing his exasperation (and bringing to mind current presidential campaign themes) with "I Don't Understand the Poor." 

Lauren, a former newspaper editor, is the editor of The Connecticut Arts Connection (http://ctarts.blogspot.com) and Reflections in the Light (http://reflectionsinthelight.blogspot.com) where she reviews Broadway, Off-Broadway and Connecticut theater. She also is a freelance writer and consults and produces for the theater. She is a member of The Drama Desk, The Outer Critics Circle, The American Theater Critics Association, the CT Critics Circle, The League of Professional Theatre Women and the National Book Critics Circle. She and her husband live in Granby, CT. Visit her writing site at http://laurenyarger.wordpress.com.

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