Whoa — another amazing multi-character performance: Jefferson Mays in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, book and lyrics by Robert L. Freedman, music and lyrics by Steven Litvak. Mays plays old, young, male, female, aristocrat and buffoon. There must be quite a crew backstage to achieve the lightning-fast changes of costume.
The show is presented as a 19th-century musical fest based on the premise of the old English film, “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” starring Alec Guinness, who played a man 8th in line for high aristocratic position who decides to kill his way up the line.
Beautiful design by Alexander Dodge, with perfect lighting by Philip S. Rosenberg, helps present a colorful picture of an 1890’s spectacle, which is amplified by Linda Cho’s illuminating costumes. All of the casting by director Darko Tresnjak is inspired. Bryce Pinkham commands the stage as the ambitious climber. The two contrasting leading ladies, the tall blonde Lisa O’Hare and the short, dark Lauren Worsham, are both quite beautiful and terrific singers with operatic tones which fit perfectly with the Gilbert-and-Sullivanesque songs. The latter are filled with lyrical romanticism plus humor, as in “I Don’t Understand the Poor.” The melodies linger, the performances by the entire versatile cast are merely superb.
The show has a gay sensibility in both the old and the contemporary (“It’s Better With a Man”) use of the word, and the crisp comic staging by Tresnjak, is brilliant.
I didn’t stop smiling through the two acts. The show is a sure Tony nominee and, if the awards were held tomorrow, I’d vote for it to win.
