A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder Comes to Olney Theatre Center
Olney Theatre Center is closing out its season with the theatrical equivalent of a wicked grin. From July 2 through August 23, 2026, the Tony Award winning musical comedy A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder takes over the Roberts Mainstage, and it arrives with one of the great gimmicks in modern musical theatre intact: a single actor playing every member of the aristocratic family that keeps, inconveniently, dying.
That actor is Tom Story, a recent Helen Hayes Award recipient who last graced the Olney stage as Miss Trunchbull in Matilda. Here he takes on all of the ill-fated D'Ysquiths, the absurdly wealthy clan being picked off one by one. Doing the picking is Jacob Tischler as Montague "Monty" Navarro, the distant relation with social ambition and a flexible conscience. Tischler is no stranger to Olney audiences either, having earned a Helen Hayes Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor in a Musical for his Cosmo in Singin' In The Rain. The production is directed by Eleanor Holdridge, choreographed by Ashleigh King, and music directed by Christopher Youstra.
For all its modern polish, the show has deep roots. The book and lyrics are by Robert L. Freedman, with music and lyrics by Steven Lutvak, and the story traces back to Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal, a 1907 Edwardian novel by Roy Horniman. That same source famously inspired the 1949 Alec Guinness film Kind Hearts and Coronets, which is where the now signature conceit of one actor inhabiting an entire family first took hold. When the musical reached Broadway in 2013, it turned that conceit into a phenomenon. The show collected four Tony Awards in 2014, including Best Musical and Best Book of a Musical, out of ten nominations, more than any other production that season. Critics delighted in its gleeful body count, with more than one reviewer reaching for Sweeney Todd as the closest point of comparison. The score itself leans closer to operetta and Gilbert and Sullivan than to the power ballads of contemporary Broadway, all patter songs, lush ensemble numbers, and impeccably timed mayhem.
Olney's leadership sees the piece as a natural fit for the warmer months. "A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder may be the perfect Olney Theatre summer musical," said Artistic Director Jason Loewith. "We're ready to let our hair down, we feel a little more mischievous, and Gentleman's Guide gives us a great way to celebrate the freedom of the season. And the team we've assembled includes some of our favorite collaborators, beginning with Tom Story, fresh off his Helen Hayes Award for directing The Inheritance; Jacob Tischler who charmed the pants off our audiences when he played Cosmo in Singin'; director Eleanor Holdridge, who has made so many of our audiences laugh (Ken Ludwig's Lend Me a Soprano; Fickle: A Fancy French Farce); and choreographer Ashleigh King who has blossomed from an ensemble regular at Olney, into one of the region's busiest choreographers. And with my colleague Christopher Youstra music directing, you know this score is going to shine."
The plot is a satire of money, manners, morals, and, yes, murder. After his mother's death, Monty Navarro is shocked and delighted to learn that she had a secret: she was related to the absurdly wealthy and aristocratic D'Ysquith family. If at first Monty hoped his new relations might provide a sorely needed cash infusion, the math is discouraging. As eighth in line to the title of Earl of Highhurst, there isn't much hope of him inheriting the family treasure. Then a reunion with one of his long-lost kinfolk suddenly results in him moving into seventh place, and Monty wonders to himself, "Why stop there?" Thus begins one of the funniest and most outrageous murder sprees in musical theatre history.
Joining Story and Tischler are Sumié Yotsukura as Sibella and Sadie Koopman as Phoebe, the two women navigating Monty's affections, with Donna Migliaccio as Miss Shingle. The ensemble features Benjamin Lurye (also understudying Montague), Anna Maria Ferrari (Dance Captain and understudy for Sibella), Simone Ballinger-Brown (understudy for Phoebe), Canter Irene O'May (understudy for the D'Ysquiths), Karen Vincent (understudy for Miss Shingle), and DeCarlo J. Raspberry. Wynter Nicole Cook and Michael E. McGovern serve as swings. Ben Walsh is the Production Stage Manager, with Rebecca Talisman as Stage Manager and Sara Gehl as Assistant Stage Manager.
A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder runs July 2 through August 23, 2026 in the Roberts Mainstage at Olney Theatre Center, 2001 Olney-Sandy Spring Road, Olney, MD 20832.