Review: A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER at Austin Playhouse
Manners, money, and murder draw laughs with satire, now playing through May 17th, 2026
Some musicals are built to make you cry. Some to haunt you. Others keep you laughing almost against your better judgment. A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder at Austin Playhouse, directed by Lara Toner Haddock, commits fully to the latter, and does so with gleeful precision.
The story is straightforward. Monty Navarro learns he is ninth in line for the D’Ysquith fortune, a family so saturated with privilege it feels less like lineage and more like a cautionary tale dressed in inherited wealth. With eight relatives ahead of him, Monty decides to clear his path to fortune. What follows is a series of carefully staged “accidents,” carried out so politely they almost feel like lessons in manners gone fatally wrong.
… an accidental fall
… an ice skating accident
… a traveling mishap
… a bee sting
… a prop mishap off stage
… a heart attack (or was it?)
… and the one everyone expects: poisoning. After all, Monty does walk around with “poison in his pocket” for half the show.
Austin Playhouse
PC: Steve Rogers Photography
The satire succeeds because it never strains for attention. The D’Ysquith world is not exaggerated so much as gently exposed, like cracks appearing in an old painting no one bothered to restore. Privilege here is not just wealth, it is inheritance shaping identity until absurdity feels like tradition. The humor comes from the gap between how these characters behave and how seriously they take themselves. The production trusts that gap, and lets the audience do the work of falling into it.
The ensemble moves as one, tightly in sync. Everyone is listening, reacting, and feeding off each other, so the comedy lands cleanly without ever feeling forced.
Bailey Ellis plays Monty with a calm, understated charm that turns quietly dangerous. He moves without urgency, rationalizing each step, letting ambition build almost invisibly until it unsettles.
Sarah Manna’s Sibella is sharp, elegant, and always slightly calculating, never fixed as villain or victim. Sarah Zeringue’s Phoebe brings sincerity and clarity, a grounded honesty that cuts through the world around her. The tension between them feels both romantic and ideological.
Scott Shipman, as “The D’Ysquith family,” delivers a string of distinct, absurd characters who remain consistently funny. His Lady Hyacinth D’Ysquith is notable, all physical precision, vocal shift, and aristocratic superiority, especially in her performative charity work, where virtue is pure theatre.
Bernadette Nason’s Miss Marietta Shingle sets the tone with controlled authority and just enough mischief, always knowing when to step forward and when to fade.
The design keeps the pace clean and complements the story. With Lyn Koenning leading, the orchestra stays crisp and balanced, supporting the actors without overpowering them (a challenge in most small spaces).
I’d almost forgotten how funny this show is, and that’s really the point. It’s not reaching for something profound or trying to reshape your world. It’s just built to move fast, land jokes cleanly, and keep you laughing.
Gentleman works because of its quick timing and clever structure. It pushes the comedy right up to the edge, and then goes a step further without overthinking it. Everything is in service of pace and punch.
Austin Playhouse's Gentleman doesn’t ask for your reflection. It asks for your attention and your laughs, and at least with me, it got both.
Cast: Bailey Ellis, Sarah Manna, Sarah Zeringue, Bernadette Nason, Scott Shipman, Ella Mia Carter, Matt Connely, Megan DeYoung, Nathan Daniel Ford, Matthew Joseph Garcia, and Sara Teeter.
Run time: 2 hours and 15 minutes, including one intermission
Austin Playhouse
PC: Steve Rogers Photography
A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder
music and lyrics by Steven Lutvak
lyrics and book by Robert L. Freedman
Based on a novel by Roy Horniman
Directed by Lara Toner Haddock
Now playing through May 17th, 2026
Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30 PM
Sundays at 2:00 PM
Austin Playhouse
(West Campus location)
405 West 22nd St. | Austin TX 78705
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