It is easy to see why "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder" won the Best Musical Tony in 2014.
First, consider the competition, which included the limp "Aladdin" and the thin Carole King tribute "Beautiful," so titled for its music, not its stagecraft.
But "Gentleman's Guide" also is the kind of show Broadway loves. The national tour that opened a week's run at the State Theatre in Minneapolis on Tuesday night shows off a quaint, stylish conceit and cheeky humor that manages to be both droll and slapstick (murders by bee sting, cannibals and decapitation by barbell).
Too, it revels in an original theatricality that stands out amid the knockoffs, jukeboxes and repurposed movies ("Hamilton" and "Fun Home" excepted, of course).
"Gent's Guide" owes its life to a 1907 novel and a 1949 film that told the story of a fetching young outsider who is denied access to his family fortune. He then goes about manufacturing the deaths of eight heirs so he can claim the heritage.
The real meat on these bones, though, is provided by a single actor who portrays all the victims, members of the despicable D'Ysquith (DIE-squith) clan.
Stylistically, this musical by Robert Freedman (book and lyrics) and Steven Lutvak (music and lyrics) begs, borrows and steals from most everything. There's a moment of door-slamming bedroom farce, homages to "My Fair Lady" and Gilbert & Sullivan, melodrama and cheesy romance. Squint and you can glimpse "La Cage's" foppish charm. And should you lose focus (which can happen during the second act), your mind might wonder how this Edwardian spoof would play at Downton Abbey.
Lutvak's music is fine if unmemorable, harking back to old-fashioned musicals in its rhythms and cadences. He and Freedman jam every bar with clever ditties and one gets the feeling toward the end of the evening that an awful lot of words and music have been spent on something so inconsequential.
