If you’ve ever seen the movie “Kind Hearts and Coronets,” with Alec Guinness playing eight different members of the D’Ascoyne family, you have a pretty good idea of what “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder” is about. Both the 1949 British black comedy and the 2012 Tony-winning Broadway musical are based on Ray Horniman’s 1907 novel “Israel Rank: The Autobiography of a Criminal,” in which an obscure member of an aristocratic family murders his way to the title. The musical doesn’t have Guinness, but the touring version that’s come to the Shubert Theatre is poignant as well as riotously funny.  Like the movie, the musical opens in prison and proceeds through flashbacks. We’re in 1909 London, and Lord Montague “Monty” D’Ysquith Navarro, Ninth Earl of Highhurst, is accused of the murder, by poison, of Lord Adalbert D’Ysquith, Eighth Earl of Highhurst. Monty professes his innocence to the House of Lords, even while confessing to the audience his complicity in the deaths of numerous D’Ysquith heirs. Monty’s late mother was Isobel D’Ysquith, and that put him ninth in line for the title. But she had eloped with his father, a Spanish musician, and so the family refuses to acknowledge him. Piqued, Monty begins to eliminate the intervening heirs. Along the way, he acquires a pair of lady friends, Sibella Hallward, who won’t marry him when he’s poor but might when he’s rich, and the sister of one of his victims, Phoebe D’Ysquith. It all climaxes in Monty’s trial, where Sibella and Phoebe devise an ingenious plan to free him.  The set for “A Gentleman’s Guide” is itself ingenious, a proscenium on stage framed by the Shubert’s proscenium. This inner stage, all in red, blue, and gold, is festooned with classical motifs: Greek kraters, laurel wreaths, statuary, and, at the top, “D’YSQUITH.” (The name is pronounced “DIE-squith.”)  Monty sits stage left, at his desk in prison, and as he writes his account, he explains how he became a serial killer. The murder methods are different from those in “Kind Hearts and Coronets” but just as original — noting that Lady Salomé D’Ysquith Pumphrey has the title role in Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” Monty simply loads the gun that Hedda uses to shoot herself with real bullets. (“The audience rose to its feet; Lady Salomé, unfortunately, did not.”)  Darko Tresnjak, who helmed the original Broadway production (and won a Tony for best direction of a musical), keeps the tone light and spoofy, with nods to silent movies and British music hall. Kevin Massey’s Monty is so good-natured and reasonable, and so deserving of the earldom, that the elimination of the heirs — most of them dastardly — seems only natural. John Rapson emulates Guinness by playing all eight heirs; they’re equally cartoonish and hilarious, from pith-helmeted bodybuilder Bartholomew to “It’s Better With a Man” Henry, who sports a Norfolk jacket and an outsized scooter built for two.  Monty’s two ladies, meanwhile, give the musical its poignance. Despite her vanity, Kristen Beth Williams’s radiant, irrepressible Sibella really loves him — but so does Kristen Hahn’s fluttery, self-deprecating Phoebe. In the musical’s best scene, Monty is literally caught between them, with Sibella hiding, and listening, in his bedroom of his bachelor flat while Phoebe sits in his parlor and proposes marriage.  The cast is inspired from top to bottom, and everyone makes the most of the musical numbers, which are serviceable if not memorable. The second act does sag a bit when most of the heirs have been dispatched and we have to sit through an endless dinner at Highhurst Castle. But the finale also brings a few nice surprises. Jennifer Smith’s gravel-voiced Miss Shingle, who appeared at the outset to enlighten Monty as to his heritage, turns up at the end with the scoop on who really poisoned Adalbert, and there’s another late arrival as well. Don’t leave till the curtain calls are finished, and keep your eye on the belladonna flower that Monty receives from Phoebe.  A GENTLEMAN’S GUIDE TO LOVE AND MURDER  Book by Robert L. Freedman. Music by Steven Lutvak. Lyrics by Freedman and Lutvak. Directed by Darko Tresnjak. Presented by Citi Performing Arts Center. At the Shubert Theatre, through Oct. 23. Tickets: $45-$125, 866-348-9738, www.citicenter.org
A production of the Tony-winning musical at the Shubert Theatre is riotously funny — and at times even poignant.