A GENTLEMAN'S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER's Steven Lutvak Set for THEATER TALK this Week

This week's guest on THEATER TALK is Steven Lutvak, composer and co-lyricist (with librettist Robert L. Freedman), of the new hit musical, A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder at the Walter Kerr Theatre. Lutvak performs songs from the show for co-hosts Michael Riedel of the New York Post and Susan Haskins and explains the musical settings and how they were conceived.

This latest edition of THEATER TALK premieres in the New York metropolitan area on Friday, April 18 (2014) at 1 AM (early Saturday morning) on Thirteen/PBS, with repeats on CUNY TV* on Saturday 4/19 at 8:30 PM, Sunday 4/20 at 12:30 PM, and Monday 4/21 at 7:30 AM, 1:30 PM, and 7:30 PM.

Based on the same source material that inspired the Alec Guinness film, Kind Hearts and Coronets, the musical features Jefferson Mays in a tour de force performance as a succession of family members murdered by one Monty Navarro (Bryce Pinkham), a distant heir to a family fortune speeding up the line of succession. Lutvak talks about the challenges of creating a musical personality for each of the eight characters portrayed by Mays. The score has "one foot in classical music, and one foot in music hall," according to Lutvak. The journey to Broadway took ten years.

The Bronx-born Lutvak's roots in musical theater go back to seeing the original cast of Oliver! and studying at the NYU Musical Theatre Workshop, with guest teachers like Leonard Bernstein and Betty Comden & Adolph Green, where he learned that a song is a one-act play. A graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, he is the only one in his family who can carry a tune. The original cast album for A Gentleman's Guide is available on Ghostlight Records

THEATER TALK is jointly produced by the not-for-profits Theater Talk Productions and CUNY TV. The program is taped in the Himan Brown TV and Radio Studios at The City University of New York (CUNY) TV in Manhattan, and is distributed to 100+ participating public television stations nationwide. THEATER TALK is made possible in part by The New York State Council on the Arts, The New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, The TDF/TAP Plus Program, The CUNY TV Foundation and The Friends of THEATER TALK.

*CUNY TV, the City University of New York television station, is broadcast over-the-air in the New York metropolitan area on digital Ch. 25.3, and cablecast in the five boroughs of New York City on Ch. 75 (Time Warner and Cablevision/Optimum), Ch. 77 (RCN), and Ch. 30 (Verizon FiOS). The show is available online anytime at www.cuny.tv and www.theatertalk.org, and via iTunes podcasts. CUNY TV is also live-streamed on www.Aereo.com.