Monty Python fans, you’ll love irreverent ‘Gentleman’s Guide’
Go back far enough and we’re all sitting on the same family tree, which exposes class-based distinctions for the farce they are.
The Tony-winning musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” — an exquisitely crafted farce by Robert L. Freedman (book and lyrics) and Steven Lutvak (music and lyrics) — takes that idea and runs with it. Presented by a competent non-Equity touring company, it’s playing at the Marcus Center through Sunday.
Set in 1909 Britain, “A Gentleman’s Guide” gets under way in the humble flat where Monty Navarro (Blake Price) discovers that his poor, just-deceased mum was actually a D’Ysquith — until being cast off and disinherited by this lordly crew of aristocrats because she married for love instead of money.
All of which does little for Monty. He may be ninth in line to the D’Ysquith earldom, but the family rebuffs his conciliatory overtures and pleas for a job — just as his cold-hearted mistress (Colleen McLaughlin) ditches him for a man with more money and better prospects.
Monty’s solution? Kill the D’Ysquiths standing between him and the peerage, in a plot that blends just a dash of Agatha Christie with a heaping helping of Monty Python, set to patter songs and ballads suggesting an Edwardian music hall and Victorian operetta.
Each of Monty’s D’Ysquith victims — including a tipsy clergyman, a rake, a gay beekeeper, an obtuse and meddlesome do-gooder and a frightfully bad actor — is played by James Taylor Odom, tackling the role made famous on Broadway by Jefferson Mays.
Odom plays nine D’Ysquiths in all, changing faces and personae as quickly as he changes costumes. None of his characterizations goes deep; they’re not supposed to. Much like a Wilde comedy, everything here lies in plain view right on the surface — true to a milieu in which artifice and style channel all about the self that could not be fully expressed.
Hence the false proscenium, creating a second stage that’s colorfully and busily decked out like a toy theater — all while replicating a London music hall, right down to the old-fashioned footlights and crushed red velvet curtains. Those curtains open and frame every succeeding murder, each of them playing like a self-sufficient vaudevillian vignette.
Which means “A Gentleman’s Guide” isn’t for everyone; if you’re looking for power-pop ballads, dazzling choreography and a big and sentimental love story, this might be one to sit out. Its appeal is to the head rather than the heart.
But if you love the songs created by Gilbert and Sullivan and Noël Coward — and care about things like clever lyrics and true rhymes, authentic, period-specific orchestration (kudos to Jonathan Tunick) and a cast whose voices are less about amp than art — “A Gentleman’s Guide” could be your dish of tea, despite its one-note plot and characters.
“A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” continues through Sunday at the Marcus Center, 929 N. Water St. For tickets, visit marcuscenter.org. Read more about this production at TapMil waukee.com.