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Broadway Rewind: The D'Ysquiths Arrive on Broadway with A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER
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Oct 27, 2022
Today we rewind to 2013, when A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder was getting ready for Broadway. The musical premiered at Hartford Stage before arriving at the Walter Kerr Theatre, where it played for 905 performances.
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Hello, I'm Richard Ridge for Broadway World
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The new musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder will open on Sunday evening, November 17th, at the Walter Kurth Theatre
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The cast is led by Tony Award winner Jefferson Mays and Bryce Pinkham
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and I caught up with the company here at the Norwood Club during a break in rehearsal
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Only another man knows what you need. And when a man has fallen down upon his feet
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it's such a moment to remember that Someone who's self-control, someone who's strong as gold
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someone who's good as gold, it's better with a man. Better with a man
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Then you'll agree, my friend. Indeed I do. Only a man would see the meaning of victory
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Over the camaraderie It's been a man, a man Welcome to Broadway with a piece now
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How do you feel? Oh, I feel great. I've loved every minute of my five years working on this show
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I started doing the workshops. I brought Jefferson into it because I had worked with him before
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And then we premiered it at Hartford Stage. It was fun. It was really well received
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We took it to the Old Globe. They went nuts. So it's nice. It's nice to bring it to New York now
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I feel very happy. Take me back to the beginning when you got the material
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What attracted you to want to direct it? And what were the challenges for you early on
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Well, you know what? It was the kind of music that I like to listen to
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It's a combination of music that's very funny and very romantic, very tuneful
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so people do leave this show singing the tunes and then the lyrics made me laugh and what I like to
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say is if not a single note was sung it would still be a great show because the plot is so
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amazing the story is so much fun so that's what attracted me to it and the challenge is you know
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it has always felt just joyous it has never felt like heavy lifting it has always felt like a great
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deal of fun so um it's not that there aren't challenges um the the particular i would say
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the trick was all of the routines that jefferson developed you know in workshops the idea was how
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to keep that so we built the set around him usually the actors come later in this instance
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actually you know i wanted to keep the ideas he developed and we designed the costumes and
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the sets around all of that. So, yeah. You assembled an incredible cast
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Yeah, it's a beautiful cast. Bryce is a wonderful addition. And Lauren, you know, she's one of the few, I think, crossover artists
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She's a true opera singer, you know, and she's funny as hell
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And then Lisa is a major discovery. She's a wonderful English actress, but New York audiences don't really know her
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So I can't imagine anybody but her playing this part of Sabella. So what are you looking forward to the most with bringing the show to Broadway
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I can't wait to share it with New York audiences. I think it's going to be really fun
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and I think it's such a smart piece that I'd be happy to take it anywhere
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Talk about your collaboration. I was just going to say, the key to it, I think
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is we have such a good time cracking each other up. Yes, we always say that
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and much as all of this has been thrilling and head-spinning, and this is now the third production the show is getting
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there is nothing more fun than just being in the room alone with this guy
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and trying to make you laugh, and trying to make each other laugh and ourselves laugh
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And I do think, if I may say that, I think that some of the fun of that appears on stage
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Well, the miracle is that people think what we find funny is funny too. And that is a miracle, yes, because that is often not the case
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But yes, exactly, exactly. For audiences who have yet to buy tickets
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explain what the musical is all about. Well, it's about a guy, Monty Navarro
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It takes place in Edwardian England, and Monty has been raised in genteel poverty
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Then his mother dies and he finds out that she was actually an heiress to a great fortune and he is now an heir to the earldom The only thing is the family has denied her existence and therefore his existence
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and the girl that he's in love with wants to marry up, and she's rejected him, but now he sees a chance that he could maybe be an earl
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But the only thing he can figure out to do ultimately is to get rid of everybody who stands in the way of him becoming the earl
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but there's eight of them, and all eight of them are played by the magnificent Jefferson Mays
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in an incredible tour de force performance. It's an unbelievable performance, and we often say, though we've seen it a hundred times each
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hundreds of times, he's always remarkable. Just today in rehearsal, he invented something new, and he just keeps cracking us up
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and Bryce Pinkham is a great match for him. And Bryce plays Monty, our lovable murderer
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So of course we'll talk again on opening night, but what are you looking forward to the most with bringing your musical to Broadway
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Oh, that's... Oh my God. Do you have an answer to that? I'm not sure that I know I have an answer. You know what
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It's such a cliche, but it's such a dream come true for both of us
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And I think we've already, we've got it already. We're here. You know
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In a certain way, in a certain way, getting anything produced at all these days is a miracle
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and the show has been very well received thus far and in a certain way everything beyond that is gravy
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For me, watching today, because we did a run-through earlier today and I just loved the fact that there were new people in the room
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seeing what we have so enjoyed for so many years alone in the dark
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There's nothing like the sound of laughter or the silence of people leaning forward in their seats to listen
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and there's nothing like the sound of this cast. This cast is musically just incredible
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and there are 11 of them and they sing for 40. Take me back to the beginning of how, when you got the script
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what went through your mind and why you wanted to do it. Well, I had just moved to the States
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It was four years ago when they were doing the production at La Jolla
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And my agent sent me the script and I just immediately loved it
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I mean, it's so authentically British. And also I've spent my career in corset
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So it's like my favorite thing. some people don't like it but I love it
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I love the costumes, the era, the manners everything about it I just read the script, it was so fabulously
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written, it's so witty the character is fabulous and she's such a departure from
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characters that I've played in the past she's definitely the bad girl, which is
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fun for me because I've spent my career playing the sort of English Rose Ingenue
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role so that was really fun but no, I mean just everything about it, the writing
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the music it was a gold mine I was like oh my goodness I need to get the show
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it's just so fabulous Talk about the musical number you were in today
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and where it fits in The trio it's sort of a French farce
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with lots of doorography involved and it's in the second half of the show
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when you learn that there's this love triangle going on and that Monty
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has two women on the go at the same time so to speak
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and I am the mistress and when the wife-to-be knocks on the door
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I'm sort of shoved in the next room and then we do this fabulous number
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written by Stephen Lutbach and Robert Friedman and it's all to do with going in and out of doors
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and him trying to basically disguise the fact that he has a woman in the other room and it's my favorite number in the show I think
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it's incredibly fun to do. Working with this cast so far. Yes, oh my goodness
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Wow, I mean Bryce Pinkham, Jefferson Mays, Lauren Walsh. Just like the most fabulous group of people
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It's just, it's really, it's really a joy. When we did the first table read just a couple of weeks ago
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it was just fabulous to hear everybody in these parts. And I mean, they're all just so perfectly cast
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It's really wonderful. Welcome to Broadway with this. Tell me what rehearsals have been like
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They've been the most enormous fun. I have not got a huge role, important role, but not huge
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So my joy is watching how clever everybody else is. And they are astonishingly talented They make me feel like a 14 with braces on my teeth you know a real beginner The voices are tremendous
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The acting is just marvelous, and the fun to be had is legion
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So what do you do in the show? Tell me. I play Miss Shingle
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I come on at the beginning of the piece to an unexpected visitor for Monty Navarro
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to spill the beans about the fact that I knew his mother and I know secrets about the Dysquith family
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and impart them to him, which sent him off on his journey. Tell me what you love about the material
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We haven't had anything like this on Broadway. Well, what I love about the material, first and foremost
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is how clever and witty it is and how hummable all the tunes are
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Very rarely after a week of rehearsal do you know every song in the show
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especially when you're as dumb musically as I am. But I know every song
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I listen carefully. I don't know all the lyrics yet, but I listen carefully
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and it makes you laugh every time you see it. It's a clever..
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Wit is such a rare thing these days, and to get a surfeit of it is marvellous
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Welcome to Broadway with the show. How do you feel? I am so excited. This is my Broadway debut
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and it's an original role with an amazing cast and an amazing piece
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So I'm pretty much, you know, flipping out. Yeah. Good flipping out
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Yes, great flipping out. Yeah. So talk about this wonderful role you're going to play
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I play Phoebe. She is the cousin slash wife of the protagonist
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and she's in a love triangle with the protagonist, Monty, and his childhood sweetheart, Sabella
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So there's a lot of fun with that. and she's a very proper girl
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but she's also attracted to kind of the underbelly the poverty and like working one's way up
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that's very sexy to her and she has a crafty side too that you don't see till the end
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So if you were asked to describe the musical how do you describe it
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Zany, deadly fun Yeah You know, it's about someone who's climbing their way up to the top
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through murder and there's something very gratifying about that to see somebody killing everyone above them
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you know, to reach the top It's nice What you love about the material, what attracted you to this musical to want to do it
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Well, it's so well written. It's like Oscar Wilde. And then on top of that, the music is, you know, legit musical theater that you don't often see anymore
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And it's so perfectly written and perfectly suited to the voice. It's written for the voice and I love it. It's a joy
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Can I tell you something? Jefferson Mays is a marvel of modern science
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I mean, this guy is absurdly good, and not just because he's transformative
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but he's a gentleman in the rehearsal room, and I feel like every day I'm the luckiest actor alive
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He's going to give a performance that I can't wait for people to see
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Take me back to that first table read. What it was like for you? The first table read for me was terrifying
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because Jefferson obviously has been working on this show for a while
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and Stephen and Robert as well, but sometimes it's better to be shot out of a cannon
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than to have it all planned out. And that's sort of what everything's been leading up to this moment
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has felt like being shot out of a cannon, but it's great. Talk about the role that you play
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I play Monty Navarro. He is sort of the Dickensian underdog protagonist
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and he learns at the beginning of the show that he is heir to a distant relative who is the Earl, the Earl of the Realm
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So he's heir to this title and a great fortune, but there are eight people before him in the line of succession
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It turns out they're all sort of these despicable relatives, and so it being a musical comedy, he decides to, one by one
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dispatch each one of them to their maker. and at the same time he caught in a love triangle with these two beautiful women who sing like goddesses So I have a lot to do but gosh I a lucky guy I really am
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Broadway hasn't seen anything like this. No, this is something like this. I can't think of anything like this that's been on Broadway
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I've been describing it like the love child of Gilbert and Sullivan
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if they invited Charles Dickens over to watch Downton Abbey and then took a hit of laughing gas and wrote a musical
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And then Stephen Sondheim came in and was like, I have some ideas for some really witty lyrics that you would love
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I mean, it's really got a lot of tradition sort of intersecting in this kind of like bomb of comedy
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And I'm so excited. I can't wait for you to see it. I think that's the best description
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They should stick that on the flyer. Yeah, exactly. No, it is
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It's like Gilbert and Sullivan called up Charles Dickens and was like, hey, do you like Downton
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The laughing gas. The laughing gas, yeah. As if they all took laughing gas and said, let's sit down and write a musical tonight
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And 10 years later, here we are. Tell me what this has been like working on
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It's been a wild adventure that has taken us from Hartford, Connecticut to sunny San Diego to here
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And again, I never thought we'd end up here, but here we are. Just where we ought to be, I think
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Jefferson, take me back to the beginning. when you got the musical and what attracted you to this
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and why you wanted to do it? It was the story. In all honesty, it was playing eight different characters
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which just appeals to me. I suffer from that actor's pathology of wanting to play all the parts
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and they very kindly indulged me with that. So they sent me the script to read a number of years ago
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about three years ago, so I've done a number of workshops and then these various incarnations across the country
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and it's just been a rollicking good time. for us all. So how different are the
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eight that you're playing? Can you tell us briefly about them? Very briefly, in a nutshell, I play Adalbert
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Dysquith, who's the sort of Ursine patriarch, the current earl, and Dysquith
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Jr., who is a sort of predatory, rapacious cad and a bounder, and
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then a man of finance, Dysquith Sr. I play a very bad actress in a production of
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Hedda Gabler, Lady Salome Dysquith. And then probably the most masculine of all
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is a woman named Lady Hyacinth Dysquith, who's a society lady and a do-gooder
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and a missionary of sorts and a suffragette, probably. And then Henry Dysquith, who you met this evening
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who's rather a feat and lives in the country. And I think that's about it
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Who have I left out? I can't keep them all straight. I love it, though, because you've sort of given us
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the clip note version, which is great. What have the challenges been for you at doing them
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Because they're all quick changes, right? You put your finger right on it
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It's the quick changes, the costume changes that are challenging, which I come off the stage, sweaty
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hurl myself into the dark, I'm set upon by two muscular dressers who tear my clothes off
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put me in a new costume, whisper my next character in my ear, and shove me bodily onto the stage
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So it doesn't stop. And I wish you could come and photograph the costume changes
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because I think a great deal of the drama of the evening lies there. It seems like noise is off
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There's a whole other show going on backstage for you. It's insane. And I think that Julian, my wonderful dresser
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is probably my leading man, really. But don't tell Bryce. What do you love about the material
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I like to think of it as a letter, a love letter to musical theater tradition on both sides of the pond
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I mean, there's Gilbert and Sullivan, there's Stephen Sondheim, Rossini, Verdi's, even some Chopin
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I know that's not musical theatre But it's just an exultant love letter
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