Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
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music by Steven Lutvak, lyrics by Steven Lutvak & Robert L. Freedman, book by Robert L. Freedman, directed by Darko Tresnjak
David Mirvish, Princess of Wales Theatre, Toronto
May 25-June 18, 2016
Monty: “Who could deny, now and then, pigs can fly!”
The 2014 Tony Award winner for Best Musical, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, could be quite an entertaining trifle. It’s based on the same novel as the classic British film Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949) and finds the same whimsical humour in a man who murders the eights heirs in line between him and an earldom. Yet, the musical version has as many minuses as plusses. While it has a tightly constructed book and clever lyrics, Steven Lutvak’s pastiche of Edwardian popular music is instantly forgettable no matter how many times it’s reprised. Darko Tresnjak directs this fluffy amusement with heavy hand. And, the acting is extremely uneven.
The time is 1909 and Lord Montague “Monty” D'Ysquith Navarro, Ninth Earl of Highhurst (Kevin Massey) is writing his memoirs entitled A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder on the day before his execution. (The “D’Ys” in “D’Ysquith” is pronounced “dice”.) Through flashbacks introduced by voice-over narration, we see how he arrived at his present situation. Two years earlier, shortly after his beloved mother’s funeral, Monty, at this time only a poor clerk, is visited by a Miss Shingle (Mary VanArsdel) who works for the present Earl of Highhurst. She reveals that Monty’s mother was a D’Ysquith who was disinherited by by her father for marrying beneath her station, to a Castilian no less, hence Monty’s surname of Navarro. Miss Shingle hints to the unassuming Monty that only eight people stand between him and the title.
Monty thinks that news of his aristocratic descent will cause Sibella (Kristen Beth Williams), the woman he loves, to marry him, but Sibella intends to marry for money and Monty is poor and too distant from the title. Monty’s encounters with the disdain of Asquith D’Ysquith, Jr., and with the Earl himself (all the D’Ysquiths are played by John Rapson), causes Monty to hate them even more for having made his mother’s life miserable. He decides to appeal to the Reverend Ezekiel D’Ysquith to intercede for him to be recognized as part of the family, but the drunken clergyman falls to his death from a church tower because Monty decides not to lend him a helping hand.
The seed is now planted in Monty’s mind of doing away with the remaining D’Ysquiths both to avenge his mother and to win Sibella’s hand. The rapid sequence of murders and accidental and natural deaths of seven D’Ysquiths means that by the end of Act 1, Monty is only one step away from the earldom. He has also fallen in love with the virtuous Phoebe D’Ysquith (Adrienne Eller), who, luckily for her, does not stand between Monty and the title. He has also risen in the world due to the largesse of the kindly Asquith D’Ysquith, Sr., who takes Monty under his wing as a second son. Since Monty is financially secure, with the higher love of Phoebe and with the carnal love of the unhappily married Sibella, we wonder whether Monty really has any need to continue with his murderous plans.
The action plays out on and around designer Alexander Dodge’s Edwardian proscenium stage upon the stage. The toy-like stage is full of surprises and its floor often moves forward to create a thrust, but it does mean that the majority of the action is concentrated in a very small area of the vast Princess of Wales stage.
The use of a stage-upon-the-stage already emphasizes the show’s theatricality, but for director Darko Tresnjak that is not enough. He views the Edwardian setting as an excuse to encourage over-the-top acting, mugging, funny voices and walks, from nearly everyone except Kevin Massey so that the show becomes more like a live-action cartoon than a comic play with music. Tresnjak seems unable to stage a musical number without overloading it with unnecessary action and sight gags. He may think he is enhancing the comedy but in fact he succeeds only in distracting us and taking attention away from the music and lyrics. There are many song like “Poison in My Pocket” that you will remember, if at all, because of what happens visually rather than because of the words or music.
Rarely, Tresnjak creates a sequences like “I’ve Decided to Marry You” where through very intricately timed physical action involving two doors Monty tries to keep the irate Sibella in one room from meeting the anxious Phoebe in another. The physical demands of the staging executed while all three characters are singing was rewarded with the longest and loudest applause of the evening. Yet, over the course of two-and-a-half hours Tresnjak’s persistent attention-stealing “Look how funny I am” direction is ultimately more exhausting than invigorating.
What’s odd about Tresnjak’s encouragement of overacting is that it’s unevenly applied. John Rapson, Kristen Beth Williams and Kristen Menglekoch as Lady Eugenia suffer from (or give in to) it the most, whereas Kevin Massey, Adrienne Eller and Mary VanArsdel remain virtually unscathed.
While both the musical and the film Kind Hearts and Coronets are based on the 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by Roy Horniman, the notion of having one actor play the entire family of D’Ysquith heirs can only derive from the film which provided Alec Guinness with an actor’s tour de force. Critics praised Jefferson Mays when he played the roles on Broadway, but John Rapson is distinctly less impressive. Of the nine D’Ysquiths (there’s one more than in the film), Rapson distinguishes only four by means of voice and gesture. These are the benevolent Asquith D’Ysquith, Sr., the Reverend Ezekiel D’Ysquith, the not-so-closeted Henry D’Ysquith and the lower-class Chauncey D’Ysquith. Even then, Henry, with his silly laugh and prancing about, is overdone. Otherwise, for the other five D’Ysquiths Rapson allows Linda Cho’s amusingly outré costumes to do the acting. These five, including the two women, become just slight variations of the loudmouthed bully Rapson first introduces as the Eighth Earl of Highhurst. A further problem with Rapson is that he has the least clear diction when singing of anyone in the cast which means that at least half of Freedman’s clever lyrics go unheard.
As Sibella, Kristen Beth Williams starts out as way too much with her posing and false smiling, but Tresnjak strangely allows her to give all this up once Sibella becomes Monty’s mistress. Williams has a pleasant, operetta-like singing voice but, as with Rapson, her unclear diction means that we understand little of what she sings. The worst representative of Tresnjak’s encouragement of overacting is Kristen Menglekoch as Lady Eugenia, wife of the Eighth Earl of Highhurst. Eugenia is supposed to detest her husband, but Menglekoch begins so far over the top with so much ferocious grimacing and shrieking that she leaves herself nowhere to go .
The result of all this is that Kevin Massey, rather than Rapson, is the undisputed star of the show even though he doesn’t have the final bow. Massey engages us in Monty’s fall from innocence into evil and he makes the question of whether Monty will continue his murderous ways when he has no need to do so the main reason for returning to see Act 2. Besides having a fine light baritone, he has the best diction in the cast which stands him in good stead with the various rapid patter songs Lutvak and Freedman throw his way. He is also adept at physical comedy and can get a laugh simply with a quick knowing glance at the audience.
As Phoebe, Adrienne Eller has a light soprano and never overplays her character’s demureness. In “Inside Out” she has what is probably Lutvak’s best imitation of an Edwardian ballad and delivers it with the same sort of amusingly suppressed emotion that we find in the heroines of Gilbert and Sullivan. Mary VanArsdel also comes across as a Gilbertian creation rather like Little Buttercup though without a very good song to sing (“You’re a D’Ysquith”).
Anyone who saw Tresnjak’s staging of Titus Andronicus at the Stratford Festival in 2011 will know that his directorial philosophy of “too much is not enough” is a creed that leads to diminishing returns. Theatre audiences really don’t need to be hit over the head every five minutes to realize that a play is tragic or, in this case, that a musical comedy is funny. Repeatedly, one wishes Tresnjak would just let the words and music tell the story themselves without the help of dancing suits of armour or Aaron Rhyne’s sometime hectic projections. When he does take a hands off approach, as in the song “Better With a Man” where Henry D’Ysquith thinks he is bonding with Monty, the humour inherent in the music and lyrics has a chance to shine through and is genuinely fully without feeling forced.
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder is a property that should prove quite popular even if the book is stronger than the music. I look forward to the time when it is licensed to other professional groups because then, under other directors, we may have a chance to appreciate the work more fully for its own inherent virtues.
©Christopher Hoile
Running time: 2 hours 20 minutes, including intermission.
Tour stops completed after Toronto:
• The 5th Avenue Theatre, Seattle, WA
July 12-31, 2016;
• Starlight Theatre, Kansas City, MO
August 9-14, 2016;
• AT&T PAC, Dallas, TX
August 16-28, 2016;
• The Fabulous Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO
September 13-25, 2016;
• Peace Center, Greenville, SC
September 27-October 2, 2016;
• Fisher Theatre, Detroit, MI
October 4-16, 2016;
• Citi Performing Arts Center, Boston, MA
October 18-23, 2016;
• The Bushnell, Hartford, PA
October 25-30, 2016;
• Hershey Theatre, Hershey, PA
November 1-6, 2016;
• The Playhouse on Rodney Square, Wilmington, DE
November 15-20, 2016;
• Blumenthal Performing Arts, Charlotte, NC
November 22-December 4, 2016;
• Providence Performing Arts, Providence, RI
December 6-11, 2016;
• Wharton Center for Performing Arts, East Lansing, MI
December 13-18, 2016;
• Hippodrome, Baltimore, MD
December 27, 2016-January 1, 2017;
• Aronoff Center, Cincinnati, OH
January 3-8, 2017;
• Walton Arts Center, Fayetteville, AK
January 10-15, 2017;
• Artis – Naples, Naples, FL
January 17-22, 2017;
• Tennessee Performing Arts Center, Nashville, TN
January 24-29, 2017;
• Dr. Phillips Center, Orlando, FL
February 7-12, 2017;
• Shea’s, Buffalo, NY
February 16-22, 2017;
• Segerstrom Center, Costa Mesa, CA
February 28-March 5, 2017;
• Community Center, Sacramento, CA
March 7-12, 2017
-end of tour-
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (from top) The cast of the National Touring Company, John Rapson as Lord Adabert D’Ysquith in red); Kristen Beth Williams, Kevin Massey and Adrienne Eller; John Rapson as Henry D’Ysquith and Kevin Massey as Monty Navarro. ©2016 Joan Marcus.
For tickets, visit www.mirvish.com.
2016-05-26
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder