No love for ‘Murder’

The big hook of the new musical “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder” is Jefferson Mays. He doesn’t just give a performance — he gives eight of them, impersonating members of the same British family.

This isn’t new territory for this expert chameleon: In 2003’s “I Am My Own Wife,” a solo play about a German transvestite, Mays played 35 characters, a feat that won him a Tony.

After that, eight roles must seem like a pleasure cruise. And yet none of them really register. It’s hard not to think about the real tour de force here — the one pulled off by Mays’ dressers, who sometimes have just 30 seconds to transform him into a loony clergyman in mutton chops, a cleanshaven young toff or a buxom ­battle ax.

All of them bear the surname D’Ysquith, a well-to-do clan in 1909 England. And all of them get knocked off by their black-sheep cousin, Monty Navarro (Bryce Pinkham), who’s desperate to become the moneyed Earl of Highhurst so he can marry Sibella (Lisa O’Hare), his gold-digging mistress.

“Has it never occurred to you to marry for love?” Monty asks Sibella. “Now
you’re being cruel,” she replies.

If the story is vaguely familiar, it’s because book writer Robert L. Freedman drew it from the same novel that inspired the 1949 comedy “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” in which Alec Guinness embodies the eight victims.

The droll tone and Edwardian setting should lure BBC fans, but this “Guide” has nothing on “The Mystery of Edwin Drood” — the 1985 caper musical that was successfully revived last year.

Problem No. 1 is Freedman and composer Steven Lutvak’s score, a collection of innocuous music-hall pastiches. The lyrics can be fun, as in “I Don’t Understand the Poor,” sung by the fox-hunting blowhard Lord Adalbert: “Though my politics are purely democratical/I find the species, frankly, problematical.”

But the melodies aren’t very interesting, and positively pale compared with Rupert Holmes’ catchy contributions to “Drood.”

The pacing is uneven as well. The first act consists of a series of “accidents” set up by Monty. He pushes exuberant Reverend Lord Ezekial off his church tower’s staircase, and cleverly has Lord Henry killed by his own bees. As for Lady Salome, who fancies herself an actress, Monty switches her prop gun for a real one when she stars in “Hedda Gabler”— and pop goes the thespian.

Director Darko Tresnjak comes up with staging tricks that combine projections and bright vaudevillian flair, but repetition sets in: Mays just pops back up in an outlandish new guise, looking very pleased with himself.

Meanwhile, the charmless Pinkham — much better as the villain in “Ghost: The Musical” — basically functions as a placeholder during Mays’ costume changes.

Things improve in the second act, when the show switches to Monty’s love life, split between his proper-seeming fiancée, Phoebe (Lauren Worsham), and ­Sibella.

In general, the women inspire Freedman and Lutvak, who award them their finest ditties. Worsham in particular is in gorgeous lyric voice.

Too bad the show doesn’t spend even more time getting away from murder — love becomes it so much more.