All’s farce in love, murder and inheritance
The story is sharp, the music and lyrics are bright and witty; and the national touring company executes the Broadway hit brilliantly in the much-anticipated highlight of SHN’s 2015-16 subscription season.
The simple idea could easily have grown tiresome — an impoverished gentleman has to find a way to eliminate the eight relatives who stand between him and the family fortune.
A protean and over-the-top charming John Rapson — whose ability to incorporate animalistic bleats and cascades of hysterical giggles into a song is astonishing — pulls off the same feat with infectious glee, versatility and energy to spare.
If it takes some doing, in the best of times, to pull off a comedy about a serial killer, that has to be especially true on an opening night when much of the audience arrived checking their smart phones for updates on the latest in the appalling string of mass murders the world, and this nation, have been subjected to.
Lutvak packs all the necessary plot exposition into one song, informing Monty of his hidden heritage and the family’s cruelty to his mother, and intimate the off-handed nods to Gilbert and Sullivan that invigorate the music and lyrics throughout “Gentleman’s Guide.”
The stunning Kristen Beth Williams — as Sibella, the self-absorbed woman Monty loves — cements his fate in a gorgeously funny “I Don’t Know What I’d Do” that leaves no doubt about their mutual erotic attraction or its hopelessness, if he doesn’t come into some money.
From there on, “Guide” is pretty much one delight after another, with music director Lawrence Goldberg’s tight orchestra providing a solid foundation and Peggy Hickey’s choreography adding smart ornamentation.
Massey’s boyishly confused charm helps keep us rooting for Monty, as he eliminates — in a combination of inventive cunning and dumb luck — the D’Ysquiths who stand in his way to the coveted family earldom Every member of the family is cartoonishly, hilariously hateful — with the exception of one of the lords Rapson plays, and Adrienne Eller’s sweetly over-earnest, silver-voiced Phoebe, with whom Monty falls in love.
Eller and Williams bring down the house in a magnificent, door-slamming farcical “I’ve Decided to Marry You” trio (with Massey) and, again, in a terrific attempt to frame each other for Monty’s crimes.