MURDER NEVER SOUNDED SO SWEET

The gentleman killer returns to Southern California with a smile that could polish the silver. In a joint run between Laguna Playhouse and North Coast Repertory, this A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder arrives in Laguna looking eager to please and blessedly well cast, though the gilding runs somewhat thinner than the Broadway vintage.

Lauren Weinberg, Andrew Polec and Katy Tang

Set in Edwardian England in 1909, the story begins when Monty Navarro (Andrew Polec), a penniless young man, learns from a family friend that his late mother was disinherited by the aristocratic D’Ysquith family (pronounced “DIE-skwith”). This revelation places Monty ninth in line to inherit the earldom of Highhurst. Determined to claim his patrimony, he hatches a plan to remove the eight relatives standing between him and the title. Each death unfolds as a comedic set piece, ranging from a fatal bee sting to a disastrous ice-skating accident, with one actor, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, embodying all the D’Ysquith victims in a virtuosic tour de force. Alongside this macabre ascent, Monty juggles a passionate affair with the ambitious Sibella (Lauren Weinberg) and a tender romance with his distant cousin Phoebe (Katy Tang), weaving murder, ambition, and love into a single madcap climb up the social ladder.

Katy Tang and Andrew Polec

Monty himself could use a touch more arsenic in the bonbon. Polec sings with lustrous tone and cuts every inch the matinee idol, yet the performance tilts toward charm when it might have curdled into conspiratorial mischief. The production’s romantic triangle proves both asset and encumbrance. Lauren Weinberg and Katy Tang feature satin vocals and sly phrasing, though their tug of war extends the later scenes until the two-and-a-half-hour span begins to tax patience.

Andrew Polec (center) with the Company

The staging maintains its intelligence throughout. Noelle Marion‘s direction favors precision over velocity, and the designers respond with a parade of period appointments that elicit those small gasps audiences release when they feel expertly cosseted. Marion deploys an adept supporting ensemble—Michael Cavinder, Andrew Hey, Shinah Hey, Jean Kauffman—who inhabit multiple roles and execute theatrical flourishes that amplify the comedy.

Andrew Hey, Michael Cavinder, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, Jean Kauffman, Shinah Hey

The production revels in stage artifice: Asquith D’Ysquith and a Florodora girl glide across the ice only to plunge through Monty’s carefully arranged trap, while elsewhere Monty scrambles to keep his rival lovers Sibella and Phoebe separated by a strategically placed door in Marty Burnett’s clever set. Such theatrical sleights of hand form the evening’s madcap pleasures.

Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper with the Company

In addition to the sets, Matthew Novotny‘s lighting, Elisa Benzoni‘s period-authentic and witty costumes, Chris Luessman‘s sound, and Peter Herman‘s wigs collaborate to transform the theater into a music hall where murder becomes a parlor game. The reduced orchestration performed by the ensemble of Music Director Anthony Zediker at the piano, Jennifer Williams on strings, and Amy Kalal and Katrina Earl on reeds supplies crystalline definition that flatters every patter.

Shinah Hey, Michael Cavinder, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, Jean Kauffman, Andrew Hey

Robert L. Freedman‘s libretto achieves something rarer than skillful adaptation of its two source materials. It refines Roy Horniman’s 1907 Israel Rank: Autobiography of a Criminal and deftly outmaneuvers the sleek elegance of the movie Kind Hearts and Coronets by threading the class satire with a more overtly theatrical sensibility. The book sharpens Monty’s engine of grievance by anchoring his ascent in maternal disgrace, then braids farce, thriller, and drawing room protocol into a judiciously structured second half. The murders unfold like musical numbers in their own right, while the courtship geometry becomes a structural gambit that invites audience complicity. The narrative moves with a confidence that tempers the novel’s glacial detachment and grants the film’s cool poise a more animated pulse.

Jean Kauffman and Andrew Polec

With a sense of lineage that never feels antiquarian, the score ranks among the decade’s finest. Steven Lutvak‘s music and Freedman’s lyrics build upon British music hall effervescence and Gilbert and Sullivan precision, but the pastiche never becomes self-referential exercise. One discerns wit in the internal rhymes and a craftsman’s ear for vowel play that rests naturally in a singer’s mouth. One hears counterpoint deployed as character comedy rather than mere exhibition, with duets and trios that allow hypocrisy and desire to sing at cross purposes. Melodies arrive formally dressed yet steal in like whispered secrets.

Andrew Polec and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper

The score’s second virtue lies in its architecture. It transforms the stage into a kinetic puzzle box. Numbers arrive with clean openings, purposeful development, and satisfying conclusions. Motifs return with the stealth of guilty thoughts, acknowledge themselves with a wink, then vanish. Comic patter distills dialogue to its essence, while the ballads afford characters space to flourish without sentiment choking the mechanism. The orchestration for a chamber ensemble produces color without excess, permitting the singers to articulate consonants and slice through the air like blade points. In a decade that prized volume and commercial polish, this score responds with intelligence, style, and a sense of play that rewards the audience for its sophistication.

Andrew Hey, Shinah Hey and Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper

The show is not without its flaws. Act II dawdles in the romantic entanglement, and the cumulative sweetness occasionally blunts the satirical edge. Yet the company’s collective musicianship and the show’s elaborate comic machinery persistently restore the evening’s buoyancy. The device of one actor cycling through eight aristocratic demises never exhausts its appeal, and the production continues discovering clean lines and attractive surfaces that invite complicity.

Jean Kauffman, Shinah Hey, Nicholas Mongiardo-Cooper, Andrew Hey, Michael Cavinder

Laguna Playhouse’s A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder stands handsome, tuneful, and calculating in all the proper ways. It entertains while arching an eyebrow at the social hierarchy that renders Monty’s enterprise a personal vendetta dressed as social reform. For South Orange County audiences hungry for quality musical theater, this more than fits the bill.

photos by Jason Niedle/TETHOS

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder
Laguna Playhouse
606 Laguna Canyon Drive in Laguna Beach, CA
Wed at 7:30; Thurs at 2 & 7:30; Fri at 7:30; Sat at 2 & 7:30; Sun at 1 & 5:30
(dark Oct 5 at 5:30)
ends on October 5, 2025
for tickets ($55-$121), call 949.497.2787 x1 or visit Laguna Playhouse

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA