National Tour Theater Review: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER (Ahmanson)

KISSING KILLING COUSINS

Serial killers can be fun. In the film Theatre of Blood Vincent Price sardonically played a Shakespearean actor, a hate-filled ham who doggedly “offs” the critics who panned him, snuffing out each scribe in endgames inspired by the Bard (don’t get any ideas). Who’s Killing the Great Chefs of Europe? was a less important question than watching them succumb to their own venality. And in 1949 the great Sir Alec Guinness played eight very deserving victims in Kind Hearts and Coronets, an Ealing Studio masterpiece. Inspiring that wicked movie and the Tony-winning A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (notice the order of importance in the title) is Roy Horniman’s Adventures of a Criminal. Horniman deserves as much glory as Robert L. Freedman’s clever book and lyrics and lyricist Steven Lutvak’s supple, Sullivan-style score: Horniman elaborately constructed a thoroughly satisfying “revenge comedy” that confirms Sweeney Todd’s sweet sentiment on future corpses: “They all deserve to die.”

Long before our plutocratic “1 %” excited envy, inspired gluttony and incurred wrath, ahead of Trading Places and Life Stinks, the Brits, ever addicted to Gilbert and Sullivan’s “topsy turvy,” had all but patented class hatred. Masquerading as a playful Edwardian pantomime, this delicious 2013 musical turns systematic slaughter into an art form. It helps to have a major motivation: It’s 1909 and our sociopath hero, Monty Navarro, is simply avenging the slights inflicted on his sweet mother by snobbish relations who denied her–and now his–birthright to be a patrician D’Ysquith (pronounced “Die-skwith”).

Retroactively revenging his mother’s humiliation, he accidentally, then deliberately, proceeds to eliminate the eight cousins who stand in the way between him and his presumed earldom. Heirs apparent, it seems, aren’t quite so apparent after all. Monty’s “exit strategies” include church steeples, barbells, bees, cannibals, ice, heart attacks, stage guns, and, of course, “poison in my pocket.”

Center Theatre Group’s presentation of the U.S. tour makes a visit to the Ahmanson (it plays L.A. until May 1; the tour continues through Feb. 2017). Delightfully directed by Darko Tresnjak, Gentleman’s Guide is performed on Alexander Dodge’s elaborate proscenium pop-up stage: Its deft prop changes and astonishing projections by Aaron Rhyne set the skewering scenes with swift pictorial perfection. Awaiting sentencing from his prison cell, Monty Navarro-D’Ysquith (handsome devil Kevin Massey) regales us with his memoirs: Flashbacks depict the not-so-dark doings on the storybook stage.

Evening the odds, Monty simply proceeds to put his fellow D’Ysquiths in their place–six feet under. With true Mystery of Irma Vep dexterity, over a diverting 150 minutes merry prankster John Rapson plays each worthy D’Ysquith casualty with caricatured precision. Rapson paints a one-man rogues gallery of twits, ninnies, rotters, cads and bounders worthy of P.G. Wodehouse. In the process Rapson deftly apes the insufferable arrogance of unearned entitlement.

We encounter the haughty Lord Adalbert (“I Don’t Understand The Poor”), intrepid explorer Lady Hyacinth, fatuous Reverend Ezekial, insipid scion Asquith Jr., nelly poofster Henry, suffragette tragedienne (more than she knows) Lady Salome, and Chauncey, an equally impecunious pretender waiting in the wings. Lurking in the background is self-effacing Miss Shingle (Mary VanArsdel), a friend of Monty’s mother who’s quite capable of pulling off a “deus ex machina” as needed.

When Monty isn’t shortening lives and shrinking lineages, he negotiates a love life as tangled as his successful succession to the D’Ysquith riches. Fortune huntress Sibella Hallward (the curvy, tall and powerfully flirtatious Kristen Beth Williams) mischievously trifles with Monty’s affections as she pursues the more marriageable (and unseen) Lionel. Irritated by this ice princess, Monty finds warmth and reassurance from his demure cousin Phoebe (silvery soprano Adrienne Eller). In the duet “Inside Out” Monty and Phoebe croon the comedy’s theme–the danger and delight of playing appearances against actuality. It’s not easy to assiduously balance the gold-digger against the ingénue soubrette, both of whom proclaim “I’ve Decided To Marry You.” But long ago Monty learned the importance of being devious.

Even when the killing spree abates, this mercurial musical has further fun to unleash, including a second-act tableau vivant set in a cemetery (“Why Are All the D’Ysquiths Dying?”), a monumental dinner-banquet spat between the last Lord Adalbert and his venomous Lady Eugenia (Kristen Mengelkoch) (“Looking Down the Barrel of a Gun”), a properly nonsensical trial scene, and at least two twists worthy of Saki or O. Henry. With all of this, Guide can be fiendishly funny, but don’t expect it to mirror all of the hype. The songs suit the moment but don’t last beyond curtain call (for once, most of the lyrics come shining through at the Ahmanson). It’s the silliest of times. Expect escapist fare, not a masterpiece, and you’ll never notice how the modern musical gets away with love and murder.