French Production of A Gentleman's Guide to Love & Murder Delights at Palais-Royal

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A Tony Award-winning Broadway gem finally finds its ideal French home at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, in Stéphane Laporte’s faithful adaptation and Virginie Lemoine’s sharply inventive production.

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Few musical-theatre stories have travelled quite as far, or taken quite so many forms, as the one behind Le Guide du parfait gentleman assassin . Its starting point was Roy Horniman ’s 1907 novel Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal , which became the basis for the 1949 Ealing comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets , immortalised by Alec Guinness playing eight members of the doomed D’Ysquith family. More than sixty years later, the same material was transformed by Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak into A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder , which arrived on Broadway in 2013, played 905 performances and won four Tony Awards in 2014, including Best Musical, Best Direction, Best Book and Best Costume Design, as well as seven Drama Desk Awards. And earlier this year the story returned to the cinema in John Patton Ford’s How to Make a Killing , with Glen Powell as its murderous heir. The film received a relatively muted response, but its very existence confirms the extraordinary resilience of Horniman’s original premise.

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Now the musical has made its French-language debut at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, in Stéphane Laporte’s adaptation and Virginie Lemoine’s production, which opened on 21 August. There is a particular sense of inevitability about its arrival in France because, despite its British setting and American Broadway origins, the musical seems almost tailor-made for French comic theatre. Laporte himself calls it “the adaptation of my life” and considers it the most French of Broadway musicals, describing the mixture as “1/3 Benny Hill, 1/3 James Ivory , 1/3 Agatha Christie”. It is an apt formula for a work that combines the polished manners of Downton Abbey and with the sophistication of a Guitry comedy, the broad comic instinct of Offenbach and the murderous puzzle-box construction of an Agatha Christie mystery.

Laporte’s respect for the original is unusually absolute. Having adapted musical theatre for twenty-five years, he has chosen on this occasion not to alter a single line or rhyme. The French text therefore preserves remarkably closely the character of the original while allowing its particular blend of Britishness, absurdity and sophistication to resonate naturally with a French audience. The result suggests that perhaps this was always a musical waiting for the right French production.

Lemoine’s staging finds its own identity rather than attempting to reproduce Darko Tresnjak ’s Tony-winning Broadway production. The scale is deliberately lighter, and Grégoire Lemoine’s design achieves considerable versatility from a relatively small number of Edwardian arches and frames, which continually change configuration. Mariejo Buffon’s choreography is integrated so closely into these transformations that it becomes part of the scenic language itself. The production consequently has a fluidity that would be difficult to achieve with a more cumbersome Broadway-style apparatus.

One of its most delicious comic moments comes in the tango-flavoured duet “It’s Better with a Man”, shared by Mondy Navarro and Henry D’Ysquith. Benoît Cauden gives Henry a performance with more than a hint of Michel Serrault, a particularly appropriate reference in the Théâtre du Palais-Royal, where Serrault made theatrical history as Albin in the original French La Cage aux folles , running from 1973 to 1978. It is one of several moments in which the French production manages to acknowledge its own theatrical heritage without losing the British character of the musical.

The casting is another of the production’s considerable strengths. Gaétan Borg leads as Navarro, bringing to Monty the combination of innocence, calculation and effortless charm that the role requires. His extensive musical-theatre experience includes Mamma Mia! , Avenue Q , Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard at Bruxellons!, Captain von Trapp in The Sound of Music with Ars Lyrica and, more recently, Sondheim’s Company on tour, ahead of its appearance next spring at the Théâtre du Châtelet. Borg has also collaborated with Laporte as a musical-theatre writer, notably on the award-winning Exit . His performance here is characterised by an appealing nonchalance: however many relatives Monty eliminates, he never quite loses the audience’s sympathy, and Borg’s refusal to overplay the character is one of the reasons why.

The production’s greatest feat of casting, naturally, belongs to Benoît Cauden, who plays every one of Monty’s D’Ysquith victims. It is the Guinness conceit transferred from screen to stage, and Cauden embraces the opportunity to create a succession of distinct comic personalities without allowing the device itself to become the joke. His comic versatility is unsurprising given his Molière Award-winning performance as Leo Bloom in Alexis Michalik’s production of Mel Brooks ’s The Producers .

Camille Nicolas gives Sibella the requisite combination of glamour, appetite and social ambition. Fresh from playing April in the first French production of Sondheim’s Company , she makes the character much more than a conventional romantic complication. Emma Brazeilles is equally effective as Phoebe D’Ysquith, bringing a warmth and sincerity that ensure the other side of the love triangle matters emotionally. Both performances help prevent the murderous mechanics from overwhelming the romantic story.

Charlotte Gauthier’s musical direction is equally important to the success of the production. The orchestra is intentionally small, yet she draws from it a sound that is remarkably precise and full. This is particularly well suited to Lutvak and Freedman’s score, whose strength does not lie in a succession of obvious hit songs. Individual numbers rarely demand to be extracted from the show as standalone songs, and few are likely to become instant earworms. Their function is instead to become part of the dramatic machinery.

That turns out to be one of the score’s greatest virtues. The songs are so closely integrated into the narrative that they rarely feel like interruptions. The music carries the action forward, often with an operetta-like quality, and the transitions between spoken scenes and musical passages are almost imperceptible. Rather than stopping the story so that the audience can admire the song, the production allows the songs to serve the story. Act after act, that seamlessness becomes one of its most impressive qualities.

The choice of the Palais-Royal is therefore particularly apt. The theatre has been associated with comedy since 1783 and has also welcomed operetta, including the excellent Les Fiancés de Loches in 2014. It is a theatre whose history makes it a natural home for this curious hybrid of musical comedy, operetta, farce and murder mystery. Its decision to support such a relatively little-known work is equally welcome, particularly given that this Tony Award-winning musical has still never received a West End production, despite being, in many respects, one of the most British Broadway musicals of recent decades.

There is an additional reason to celebrate Lutvak’s presence in the repertoire. The composer died in 2023, and another of his works, a musical adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock ’s television series Alfred Hitchcock Presents , received an impressive full production at Theatre Royal Bath last spring. Its jazz-infused score culminated in some particularly effective musical writing, but the production unfortunately did not lead to a wider life for the piece. A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder , meanwhile, remains his defining theatrical legacy.

For all the attention inevitably attracted by its elaborate plot and ingenious casting device, Le Guide du parfait gentleman assassin succeeds because it is so carefully constructed. It may not possess a score full of songs destined to live independently of the show, but that is almost beside the point. Here, music, comedy, movement, character and storytelling are so tightly connected that the whole becomes greater than its individual components.

With Laporte’s exceptionally faithful French adaptation, Lemoine’s inventive staging, Gauthier’s assured musical direction and a cast that represents the very best of French musical theatre, this production makes a convincing case for a work that has been oddly neglected outside Broadway. The Théâtre du Palais-Royal has given it a home entirely suited to its mixture of elegance and outrageousness, and the result is both remarkably accomplished and exceptionally entertaining.

It is, in short, difficult to think of a more satisfying Broadway musical currently on a Parisian stage. A production of rare precision and comic intelligence, and one of the most enjoyable musical-theatre evenings Paris has offered in years.

Le Guide du parfait gentleman assassin plays at the Théâtre du Palais-Royal until 20 December.

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_Originally reported by [BroadwayWorld](https://www.broadwayworld.com/france/article/Review-A-GENTLEMANS-GUIDE-TO-LOVE-AND-MURDER-at-the-Thtre-du-Palais-Royal-20260914)._