JOAN MARCUS

arts & life

theate r

Gentlemen

Prefer Murder

Suzanne Chessler | Contributing Writer

The creative team of
Robert Freedman and
Steven Lutvak have
audiences rooting for
the underdog
in a musical coming
to the Fisher.

details

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love &
Murder runs Oct. 4-16 at the
Fisher Theatre. Tickets start at $39.
(313) 872-1000;
broadwayindetroit.com.

132 September 29 • 2016

R

obert Freedman and Steven Lutvak took
the essence of a novel with anti-Semitic
leanings, discarded the anti-Semitism
— and developed a hit musical comedy.
Their show, A Gentleman’s Guide to Love &
Murder, won four Tony Awards and now tours
the country with a run Oct. 4-16 at the Fisher
Theatre. This booking returns Freedman’s
attention to an area he has visited many times:
His mother grew up in Detroit as part of the
Najelsky family.
The main character, Monty Navarro, becomes
sympathetic despite disposing of a line of suc-
cessors to a fortune he believes rightly belongs
to him. The idea was introduced in the book
Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal by
Roy Horniman and adapted through the film
Kind Hearts and Coronets.
“Ironically, if you look at my body of work,
I’ve written a lot about crime,” says Freedman,
the show’s book writer and lyricist, in a phone
conversation from his home in California. “I
was attracted to this story partly because it was
about an underdog — somebody we can all root
for.
“What attracted me to crime in general was
the psychological underpinnings of the char-
acters — what would push somebody to that
means to an end.
“In A Gentleman’s Guide [which takes place
in 1907 England], the audience is rooting for a
murderer who has been treated badly. All the
people he ends up killing are loathsome so it’s a
little easier to root for him.”
Freedman has a lengthy list of writing

Kristen Beth Williams, Kevin Massey
(as Monty Navarro) and Adrienne Eller
in A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder

Robert Freedman

Steven Lutvak

achievements for stage, film and television.
His range can be seen most clearly through
television, reaching from musical projects,
such as Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella
and Broadway Sings the Music of Jule Styne, to
dramas, including Murder in the Hamptons and
Murder at 75 Birch.
“As a teenager, I was a member of United
Synagogue Youth and wrote shows with paro-
dies,” Freedman, 59, recalls. “After I graduated
high school, I was a teen leader at synagogues
in California. I would write parody shows with
them, and it was fun.”
After majoring in theater at the University of
California at Los Angeles, Freedman went into
dramatic writing studies at New York University
(NYU) and earned a double master’s — in that
as well as musical theater writing. His first pro-
fessional job was working on a low-budget stage
comedy as an intern.
“Foolish to Think” is the Gentleman’s Guide
song most personally meaningful to Freedman.
“It’s sung by the hero,” Freedman explains.

“He starts off feeling doubtful that he’s going to
have the woman and the life he wants. Through
the course of the song, he is determined to go
after what he wants. There’s something inside of
me telling me I am able to go after my dreams.
“The reason I like writing both books and
lyrics is that books tell the whole story, and if
they’re structured well, the songs are emotional
climaxes that people can’t help but sing; speak-
ing is not enough. Songs are the way into the
heads of the characters, things never said to
another character in the show.”
While Freedman and composer Lutvak come
up with ideas for songs together, the idea for
the production was Lutvak’s. The two had met
through New York classes and remained friends,
sometimes joining their talents for projects
while meeting at places to work between their
home locales.
Lutvak’s idea goes back to his college years at
the State University of New York at Binghamton.
“I was not sleeping at 2 a.m. and turned
on the television,” the composer recalls while
speaking from New York. “I was 19, and I was
changing channels. I found Kind Hearts and
Coronets, a movie my dad liked. I watched about
10 minutes of the film and thought it could be a
musical.
“I knew I didn’t know how to do it then, but
I knew that I would. I tried to get the rights
several times and did in 2003. I called Robert