It seems to me that A Gentlemen’s Guide to Love & Murder could have been titled How to Succeed in Murder Without Really Trying. I easily could envision a young J. Pierrepont Finch (spoiler alert) rising to the top of the D’Ysquith family, to become the Ninth Earl of Highhurst, through cunning, good fortune, and the cool clear eyes of a seeker of wisdom and truth.

As with last year’s Memphis, I preferred Porchlight’s production of A Gentleman’s Guide to the Broadway in Chicago version I saw a few years ago, due, in large part, I suspect, to the intimacy of the venue, which is, nevertheless large enough to provide the set designer the creative liberty to forge a functional and entertaining backdrop to the action.

As with Porchlight’s Gypsy, I was fortunate enough to see the first table reading of A Gentleman’s Guide, which, in this case, afforded me the opportunity to observe Matt Crowle working on the voices he would use for the nine different characters he portrays. And, while that was playful and interesting, it could not have prepared me for the way in which he distinctly inhabits all of them once he’s in costume and afforded the chance to add physicality to the roles. There are many famous death scenes in the theater. For my money, Crowle’s turn as Reverend Lord Ezekial D’Ysquith may be the most entertaining.

That said, I guess I need to see a production of The Complete Deaths (74 of them from the Bard of Avon’s works), which I missed at ChicagoShakespeare Theater in 2016. Hopefully, the play itself will rise from the ashes so that l’ll have another chance.

Meanwhile, I’ll have to be satisfied with a website I found chronicling 100 of the most memorable on screen movie deaths, led, coincidentally, by Alan Rickman, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, who gained his greatest fame in America, without really trying, as Hans Gruber in Die Hard.