A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder is a 2013 musical comedy with music by Steven Lutvak, lyrics by Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman, and a book by Freedman. It is based on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman.
The show opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre November 17, 2013, running until January 17, 2016. The Broadway production won four Tony Awards at the 68th Tony Awards in June 2014, including Best Musical.
The novel was also the source for the 1949 British film Kind Hearts and Coronets, with which it shares the conceit of casting one actor as an entire family; however, after a lengthy legal battle, the infringement claim from the film's copyright holder was dismissed. A small production of the show was also performed in 2004 under the same name of the 1949 film.
Productions
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder premiered at the Hartford Stage, Hartford, Connecticut, running in October and November 2012, with direction by Darko Tresnjak. The cast featured Jefferson Mays, Ken Barnett and Lisa O'Hare. The show was a co-production of the Hartford Stage and the Old Globe Theatre.
The musical then played at the Old Globe Theatre, San Diego, California, in March 2013. Directed by Tresnjak, the cast again featured Mays, Barnett and O'Hare.
The musical opened on Broadway at the Walter Kerr Theatre on November 17, 2013, after beginning previews on October 22, 2013. Directed by Tresnjak and choreographed by Peggy Hickey, the production closed on January 17, 2016. The original cast featured Mays (who would stay with the production for its entire run), O'Hare, Lauren Worsham and Bryce Pinkham. Mays plays nine roles, all of the D'Ysquith family. Its capitalization was $7.5 million, and in April 2015 the producers announced the recoupment of the capitalization.
A U.S. national tour of the production opened in September 2015 at the Proctor's Theatre in Schenectady, New York, and closed in March 2017 at the Sacramento Community Center Theater. A second national tour opened in September 2017 at the Overture Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and closed in May 2018 at the Mother Lode Theatre in Butte, Montana.
An Australian production opened at the Arts Centre Melbourne for The Production Company in October 2018. It featured Mitchell Butel and Chris Ryan, and was directed by Roger Hodgman.
Synopsis
Act I
A group dressed in mourning clothes enter and advise "those of you of weaker constitution" to leave the theater, as the show may prove disturbing ("Prologue: A Warning to the Audience").
In 1909, Lord Montague "Monty" D'Ysquith Navarro, Ninth Earl of Highhurst, is in jail. He says that he is writing his memoirs on the eve of his possible execution, and that his story could be called "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder". He begins his story.
In 1907, Monty is living in a shabby Clapham flat and his mother, a washerwoman, has just died. Miss Marietta Shingle, a mysterious old woman, arrives to tell Monty that his mother was, in fact, a member of the aristocratic D'Ysquith family. Isabel D'Ysquith had eloped with a Castilian musician (now also deceased), which caused her family to disown her. Wishing to spare her son any shame, Isabel never told him the truth of his ancestry. Now, Miss Shingle says, Monty is ninth in line to inherit the earldom of Highhurst. She insists that he take his rightful place in the family ("You're A D'Ysquith"). Monty writes a letter to Lord Asquith D'Ysquith Sr., the head of the D'Ysquith family banking house, explaining his connection to the family and inquiring if there might be a job available for him.
Monty is in love with Miss Sibella Hallward, but she will not marry him due to his poverty ("I Don't Know What I'd Do"). Sibella has also drawn the attention of another gentleman of higher status, Lionel Holland. She dubiously accepts Monty's story about his lineage, but remarks that eight people would have to die in order for him to become earl.
Monty receives a reply from Lord Asquith's son, Asquith D'Ysquith Jr., denying Isabel's existence and warning Monty against contacting the family again or using their name. Monty is dejected, but refuses to accept his apparent destiny as a poor commoner ("Foolish to Think"). He takes a tour of Highhurst Castle, the D'Ysquiths' ancestral home, on Visitors Day, where the spirits of his D'Ysquith ancestors admonish him that he does not belong there ("A Warning to Monty"). Lord Adalbert D'Ysquith, the current Earl of Highhurst, catches Monty looking around the ancestral library and drives him out, expressing his disdain for the commoners flooding his home ("I Don't Understand the Poor").