[Green] Mask, David Moore, 1971

Despite the high body count, the seriously squeamish needn’t fear, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder”, a light operetta that mirrors Gilbert & Sullivan. This play is about bumping off a few inconvenient relatives in Edwardian England. Really more than a few, but who’s counting? Well, that would be the protagonist, Monty Navarro, a penniless soul who at the play’s opening has just lost his mother. She has been supporting him all his life as a washer-woman. Although, it turns out that old mom came from the wealthy D’Ysquith family. She was disinherited, because she married for love. She married a Castilian. Old Monty soon calculates that there are only eight spoiled sprigs on the family tree that need be pruned before he becomes the next Earl and since they are mostly stuffed shirts or stuffed skirts and are all played by the same actor, you’ll be laughing too hard to shed a tear for any of them anyway. There’s a girlfriend too, Sibella Hallward, who is even more of a gold-digger than Monty and after he has wormed his way into the recently cooled dead bosom of his new-found family, Monty finds more than lust, dare I say love? That would be his cousin Phoebe D’Ysquith who fortunately is not ahead of Monty in his line of succession. This story is told in requiem as Monty pens his diary confession of his crimes, while awaiting the morrow’s verdict in his murder trial. This is the opening show of this year’s Fabulous Fox Tony Award Winning Season. Tuesday was also opening night. We will be adding this venue to our regular theater retinue.