Spreckels Theatre Company, Rohnert Park
Runs through October 27

The North Bay premiere of this raucous gem currently plays at Spreckels Theatre Company, making a ghoulish treat of murder and mayhem for the spooky season. Launched in 2013, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder swept the 2014 Tony awards and is now showing up in regional theatres to the delight of audiences everywhere. The cast and production team at Spreckels do a bang-up job with this one, delivering laughs and outstanding vocals alongside impressive special effects and staging.

Based on a 1907 novel, the musical’s book follows the ascendance of Monty D’Ysquith Navarro (Andrew Smith), gleefully offing those family members who precede him in line of inheritance, justifying it as revenge for wrongs done to his mother. The book has been mined before for entertainment, in the film Kind Hearts and Coronets, that starred Alec Guinness playing the roles of all the D’Ysquiths that fall prey to Monty’s scheme, including the women. The musical makes great use of this device, creating a star turn, that in Spreckels’ production is filled by local favorite Tim Setzer, who plays all those roles in a tour de force performance. You definitely don’t want to miss him in this one. …

To continue reading about this production, see the full review at Sonoma County Gazette:
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder