Nimble Massey More Than Handles His Parts in ‘A Gentleman’s Guide’

            
“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs…”.

It’s a hallowed poetic phrase that might well do as a job description for Monty Navarro, the dapper anti-hero of the Tony Award-winning musical, “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder,” and it surely fits the Broadway actor and musical comedy performer Kevin Massey, who plays Navarro like a sure-footed and steady-voiced—if murderous—centerpiece of the show playing at the Kennedy Center’s Eisenhower Theater through Jan. 30.

The 13 words lead off “If,” one of the most famous poems written by the British poet of empireRudyard Kipling, which is entirely appropriate to the task at hand, given that the show,  which was something of a surprise recipient of ten Tony Award nominations and winner of four in 2014 (Best Musical, Direction, Book and Costume Design), is set amongst the trappings (and traps) of Edwardian English aristocracy, drawings rooms, board rooms, cemeteries and such, all of which become—oh, my—killing grounds.

To continue, if you are one Monty Navarro, a young man with no apparent lineage, small prospects and a fetching mistress, who suddenly finds out that he is in fact ninth in the line to a huge family fortune, and if you realize that it may take more time to have to gain the fortune in your lifetime and if you have considerable pluck, charm and imagination, then there is only one thing to do: eliminate them all.  

Furthermore, if you are an actor of considerable gifts and are confronted with a large cast of English eccentrics both fetching and absurd (eight of them played by the same actor), then you must use your talents to provide a  certain charismatic steadiness to a wildly careening, hyper-kinetic enterprise.

That’s exactly what Massey, already a veteran musical comedy performer, did.  He already understudied the role of Monty  in the Great White Way Company of “A Gentleman’s Guide” and has appeared in such diverse projects as “Memphis,” “Tarzan” and “Big River”.

In a telephone interview with the Georgetowner from Minneapolis, where the show was playing on a leg of its national tour before opening in Washington this month, Massey talked a little bit about Monty, the show, and life on the road with a national touring company.

“I have to kill John (actor John Rapson, who plays all eight of the D’Ysquith heirs who stand in Monty’s way to the title of Lord) over and over again,” he said. “It’s tricky stuff, some of it really imaginative stagecraft. But you really have to be on your feet at all times.”

Massey is more than nimble—acting is always a kind of collaboration and sharing, but in a large undertaking such as this show, you can’t get lost in the crowd.  “I’ve never been involved in a tour like this, and what’s really great, is you all become like a family,” he said. “I know that’s a cliché, but it’s true.”

On stage, Massey is as steady as a rock, but he also oozes charm and sympathy, and sex appeal, and if you think about it, that’s no small thing: after all you end up rooting for a man who is what amounts to a serial killer.   Not that many of the d’Ysquiths deserve comeuppance.  But Monty is always at the center of things, conniving, juggling not one, but two loves of his life, always charming people with the story of his mother,  cruelly expunged from the family after marrying for love and the wrong sort of man, evading discovery.  

“It always amazes me still how the show is being received,” he said. “I mean, we’ve been in Florida, Minnesota, in Durham, North Carolina, which was a total blast, because I grew up in nearby Black Mountain. Family and friends came. I mean, I was amazed by the broad appeal of the show, all across America.” The show will hit Des Moines, Iowa, a day after the caucuses there. “That should be interesting,” he said.

The appeal of the show  seems to be evident in the response of younger audiences who are perhaps not so familiar with the source material, an obscure book from the early 1900s as well as an Ealing Studios film from 1947, “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” which starred Alec Guinness (Obi-Wan Kenobi in the original “Star Wars”) as all the heirs.   Audience seem to especially appreciate the stagecraft of the various disposals.

Still, life on the road is tough, especially if you’re Massey. He’s been married for a year now to Kara Lindsay, who’s in New York, starring as Glinda in the mega hit “Wicked.”   “It’s really hard to be apart like this,” he said.  “I try to take a break and see her when I can.  But I hate not being with her.”

He’s a clearly-in-love-and-smitten husband.  In a recent online Put it in Writing entry on Broadway.com, asked about “My Woman Crush Wednesday on Broadway is: “Kara Lindsay! AKA Kara Massey, (accompanied by smiley face and a cutout photo), or as in post-show I like to hang out with: “my awesome wife,” or as in if I could take a one-year hiatus from show business I would: “Travel, study to be a financial adviser, be with my family, make babies.”