A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder
by Steven Lutvak and Robert L. Freedman
Original Broadway Run:
* First (of 30) Previews: October 22, 2013
* Run: November 17, 2013 - January 17, 2016
* 905 Performances
* Directed by Darko Tresnjak
Opening Night Cast:
* Jefferson Mays (D'Ysquith Family)
* Bryce Pinkham (Monty Navarro)
* Jane Carr (Miss Shingle)
* Lisa O'Hare (Sibella Hallward)
* Lauren Worsham (Phoebe D'Ysquith
* Ensemble: Johanna Glushak, Eddie Korbich, Jeff Kready, Roger Purnell, Jennifer Smith, Price Waldman, Catherine Walker
Fun Fact: Jefferson Mays stayed for the entire run of the show, which was fortunate, since he would have been difficult to replace!
Here's a bonus song, in which members of the Original Broadway Cast sing a 4-minute summary of the plot!
Source: IBDB
Awards
2014 Tony Awards:
* Best Musical
* Best Book of a Musical
* Best Direction of a Musical
* Best Costume Design of a Musical
Nominations: Best Original Score Written for the Theatre; Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Jefferson Mays and Bryce Pinkham); Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Musical (Lauren Worsham); Best Orchestrations; Best Scenic Design of a Musical
2014 Drama Desk Awards:
* Outstanding Musical
* Outstanding Book of a Musical
* Outstanding Actor in a Musical (Jefferson Mays)
* Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical (Lauren Worsham)
* Outstanding Lyrics
* Outstanding Director of a Musical
* Outstanding Projection Design
Nominations: Outstanding Actor in a Musical (Bryce Pinkham); Outstanding Orchestrations; Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical; Outstanding Music; Outstanding Set Design
Sources: IBDB
Critical Response
"Despite the high body count, this delightful show will lift the hearts of all those who've been pining for what seems a lost art form: musicals that match streams of memorable melody with fizzily witty turns of phrase. Bloodlust hasn't sung so sweetly, or provided so much theatrical fun, since Sweeney Todd first wielded his razor with gusto many a long year ago."
"A stylish music-hall mystery in which we know whodunit from beginning to end, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder has lively songs, a congenial villain and a physically and morally flexible mistress."
"During previews, Broadway chatrooms have drawn facile comparison to The Mystery of Edwin Drood [...]. While there’s some overlap in the pastiche score and vintage British music hall-style staging, Gentleman’s Guide is far superior, propelled by a rollicking story, humor of the most delectable amorality and the cleverest lyrics assembled in quite some time."
"To savor this ingeniously crafted piece of Anglo-flavored foolery, you don’t have to be a fan of Monty Python, English panto, The Mystery of Edwin Drood or, indeed, Kind Hearts and Coronets [...], but it wouldn’t hurt. The most fun you can have on Broadway right now, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder is, in a word, peerless.
​
THE BOTTOM LINE: This Edwardian lark slays us with arch silliness."
assembled in quite some time."
The Creative Team
Steven Lutvak (1959-2023), Music and Lyrics
"In the New York Times, Stephen Holden wrote “An
upper-middlebrow Billy Joel crossed with a lower-
highbrow Tom Lehrer with a pinch of Debussy: that's
how you might place the music of the singer,
songwriter, pianist andraconteur Steven Lutvak in
the artistic hierarchy of contemporary songwriters.”
Steven made his Broadway debut as Composer and Co-
Lyricist of A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder,
which won the Drama Desk, Drama League, Outer Critics
Circle, and Tony Awards for Best Musical. He and his
collaborator, Robert L. Freedman, also won the Drama
Desk Award for Best Lyrics, having earlier, together, won both the Fred Ebb and the Kleban Awards for their theater songs, as well as the Tisch Big Apple Award for Outstanding Achievement in the Performing Arts for their work on A Gentleman's Guide.
Featured in Time Magazine's PEOPLE TO WATCH column, Steven wrote the title track to Paramount’s hit documentary, Mad Hot Ballroom. Additionally, Steven has performed his own songs himself at Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Recital Hall, and most of the major New York Cabaret rooms, including The Oak Room at the Algonquin, Rainbow and Stars, and the Russian Tea Room. Other awards include the ASCAP Foundation Richard Rodgers New Horizons Award, two Jonathan Larson Performing Arts Foundation Awards; the first Johnny Mercer Emerging American Songwriter Award; and a New American Works grant from the NEA. He is particularly proud that several of his songs are included in Classic American Popular Song, a follow-up to Alec Wilder’s classic textbook, American Popular Song. Steven has released two solo albums: The Time it Takes and Ahead of My Heart." - quoted from Ludvak's NYU Adjunct Faculty Profile
Robert L. Freedman (1957- ), Book and Lyrics)
"Robert L. Freedman won the 2014 Tony Award, Drama
Desk Award, and Outer Critics Circle Award for Best
Book of a Musical for the Tony-winning Best Musical
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder. With
collaborator Steven Lutvak, Robert was nominated
for the Tony Award for Best Score, and won the Drama
Desk Award for Outstanding Lyrics. Robert is writing
Book and Lyrics for the new musical, The Flamingo
Kid [...]. Robert was nominated for the Writers Guild
Award and two Emmy Awards as the writer and a
producer of ABC’s Life With Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows, the top-rated mini-series of the season and the winner of 5 Emmys, the Television Critics Association Award, the Broadcast Critics Association Award, a Producers Guild Award nominee, and a Golden Globe nominee for Best Television Movie or Miniseries. He was a finalist for the Humanitas Prize for his teleplay for Lifetime’s What Makes A Family, [...] starring Brooke Shields, Cherry Jones and Whoopi Goldberg, which won a GLAAD Award as Best Television Film of 2001.
​
Robert was nominated for the Writers Guild Award for his teleplay for Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella, starring Brandy, Whitney Houston, Whoopi Goldberg, Bernadette Peters, and Jason Alexander, which was seen by an estimated 60 million viewers on “The Wonderful World of Disney” on ABC-TV. A stage adaptation of his teleplay toured the country in a production starring Eartha Kitt. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella had its highly-acclaimed streaming premiere on Disney+ in February, 2021. Robert L. Freedman’s writing career has been an eclectic one, ranging from drama to comedy to musicals. He won the Writers Guild Award for his HBO film A Deadly Secret, and his acclaimed CBS film What Love Sees won the Silver Plaque at the Chicago International Television Festival. Honor Thy Mother, also on CBS, won him a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe Award from the Mystery Writers of America. His recent television films include Lifetime’s The Pastor’s Wife and Murder In The Hamptons.
​
Born in Los Angeles, Robert is a graduate of the U.C.L.A. Theatre Arts program. He received Masters Degrees in Dramatic Writing and Musical Theatre from the Tisch School of the Arts at N.Y.U. Early in his career, Robert wrote the PBS Special Broadway Sings the Music of Jule Styne for “Great Performances” [...].
For their work in the theatre, Robert and Steven Lutvak won the 2006 Fred Ebb Award for songwriting, the 2006 Kleban Award for lyric writing, and the 2006 California Musical Theatre Award, the latter for their musical Campaign of the Century. Based on a book by Greg Mitchell, Campaign of the Century centers on the shenanigans surrounding Upton Sinclair’s race for Governor of California in 1934. [...] Workshops of Robert’s musical Grand Duchy, with composer John Bayless, were held at Playwrights Horizons and the Papermill Playhouse.
Robert and Faye Greenberg have written a new one-man play, The Beast of Broadway: The Life and Times of David Merrick about the legendary producer. The play premiered in 2010 [...]. Robert has written his first book, Notes On The Writing Of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder (Applause Books), released May 15, 2021. [...] Robert resides in Los Angeles and New York. He is married to actress Jean Kauffman." - quoted from Robert L. Freedman's website
Steven Lutvak speaks in depth about the score and how he creates character through music (particularly to differentiate the D'Ysquiths from each other). This is very useful
From the Source
Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal (1907)
by Roy Horniman
Find the book for free here!
Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949)
Trailer: