It is the rare production that can turn the tips of an actor’s fingers to hilarious account. But in director Eleanor Holdridge’s delightful staging of A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at Olney Theatre Center, a set of half-visible digits is a spot-on gag.
Epitomizing the show’s black comedy, the moment depicts an aristocrat’s plunge into frigid water during an ice-skating excursion. Down goes the blueblood, vanishing behind a snowbank. Up comes his frantically waving hand, before disappearing again. Now the mere tops of his fingers fleetingly waggle back into view — a flesh-and-blood punchline.
The sequence is just one of the wily comic bits in this lark of a production, which nicely showcases Robert L. Freedman’s book, Steven Lutvak’s music, and the clever lyrics of both. Music director Christopher Youstra and the tuneful orchestra he conducts are invaluable as the score recalls Gilbert and Sullivan and wistful or go-for-broke music hall numbers. (The Broadway iteration of Gentleman’s Guide won multiple Tony Awards, including best musical, in 2014.)
Based on Roy Horniman’s 1907 novel, which also inspired the classic 1949 film Kind Hearts and Coronets, Gentleman’s Guide tells of an Edwardian social climber named Monty Navarro (Jacob Tischler), who learns he is eighth in line to inherit an earldom. After he starts methodically offing the more immediate heirs of the wealthy D’Ysquith family — most of whom are insufferable snobs — excitement ensues. Think: a lethal bee swarm. And a scheme involving the most dangerous reaches of the British Empire.
The show’s key device is that a single actor plays all of the D’Ysquiths on Monty’s target list. At Olney, Tom Story does the honors, with zesty turns that include a self-aggrandizing society-dame D’Ysquith, an oily-voiced doddering-cleric D’Ysquith, and an old-fogey D’Ysquith who won’t shut up about the Boer War. When the aforementioned ice-skating D’Ysquith tootles around a winter resort with a chorus girl (Simone Ballinger-Brown), even his gliding footwork looks caddish.
The giddy setup wouldn’t work if we didn’t root for Monty, adversary to these despicable fat cats. Tischler steals our sympathies with an endearing manner, singing that’s bright as a new shilling, and occasional elegant physical clowning, as when he brandishes a saw in graceful time to the number “Poison in My Pocket.”
Sumié Yotsukura vamps and flounces superbly as Monty’s self-centered mistress Sibella, while Sadie Koopman cinches the wacky earnestness of Phoebe D’Ysquith; both performers are also marvelous bravura singers. Capitalizing on a vital small role, Donna Migliaccio packs shyster verve into each utterance of Miss Shingle, who has the dirt on the D’Ysquiths.
The capable ensemble is particularly funny when embodying oh-so-gloomy mourners (“Why Are All the D’Ysquiths Dying?”), as well as when channeling the voices of Monty’s ancestors at the clan’s ancestral abode, Highhurst Castle. Costume designer Sarah Cubbage’s lavish period garb, Zavier Augustus Lee Taylor’s canny projections (which help with the bees, among other plot points), and Minjoo Kim’s dramatic lighting are also key supporting players.
John Coyne’s set humorously conjures Highhurst — with its suits of armor and stuffy portraits — and other specific locales. At the same time, metatheatrical scenic details, including deliberately stagey-looking pine trees in the skating scene, and a theater curtain that occasionally falls into place, hint that the story might be unfurling in an old-timey British music hall.
Bolstering the music hall vibe is the production’s passerelle, a catwalk that curves in front of the orchestra pit and connects to the stage. When the characters are on the passerelle, their proximity to the audience seems to collapse the distance between Monty’s world, our world, and the specter of old-fashioned variety-show exuberance.
Unlike Highhurst Castle, music hall entertainment warmly welcomed the public. Thank goodness Gentleman’s Guide, too, flings its doors open and lets us stay a while.
Running Time: About two hours 30 minutes including intermission.
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder plays through August 23, 2026, in the Roberts Mainstage at Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney, MD. Tickets range from $45–$108 and are available online, by calling the box office at 301-924-3400, or on TodayTix. Discounts are available for groups, seniors, teachers, active military, first responders, and students. Visit olneytheatre.org/discounts for details.
SEE ALSO:
Olney Theatre announces cast of ‘A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder’ (news story, June 10, 2026)
