When the musical comedy A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder premiered at Hartford Stage in the fall of 2012, few were thinking that the show would be opening on Broadway one year later, never mind winning a Tony Award for outstanding new musical, along with one for its costumer Linda Cho and another one for its director Darko Tresnjak, artistic director of Hartford Stage.

Now the show returns to the city where it all began when the national tour plays The Bushnell through Sunday, Oct. 30.

“It’s been an extraordinary for the theater and myself,” says Tresnjak, who says Tony night remains the highlight of his life, in no small part because he was able to share it with his ailing mother before she died.

John Rapson now plays the multiple members of the horrid aristocratic D’Ysquith family, succeeding Clinton’s Jefferson Mays, who originated the role in Hartford and went on to Broadway, where he received a Tony nomination.

One by one, the D’Ysquiths end up dead at the hands of a charming, down-on-his-heels, oh-so-distant relative as he makes his way to a Downton Abbey-sized inheritance.

Tresnjak says he wasn’t looking for a clone of Mays—whom he sees as a sui generis actor—for the tour.

The rounder Rapson doesn’t resemble the slender Mays physically at all, which is one of the reasons Tresnjak found him so appealing.

“This piece requires you to use every tool in the comic tool belt,” says Rapson, who originally went in to audition as a member of the ensemble, but whose comic chops convinced Tresnjak that he could be a complete re-imagining in the roles of the rotten relatives.

Kevin Massy now stars on tour as the charming and quite dashing killer Monty Navarro, a role that also earned a Tony nomination for Bryce Pinkham (who is now starring on Broadway in Holiday Inn, which began at the Goodspeed Opera House). Massey also brings his own special flair as well as youth to the demanding singing role, says Tresnjak.

Gentleman’s Guide and its Tony Awards put the spotlight on Hartford Stage—and it also brought its share of royalties for developing the work. The year following the Tony Award win brought in $84,000 in royalties to Hartford Stage. While Gentleman’s Guide was not the long-running smash that Annie was—which brought in millions to Goodspeed Opera House’s coffers and continues to do so as it continues to tour on and on—it’s still an additional sum for Hartford Stage that could not be counted on, but was certainly welcome in times of precarious funding.

Tresnjak says the success of Gentleman’s Guide enabled the theater to attract other high-profile projects such as last season’s Rear Window starring Kevin Bacon and the musical Anastasia, with a team of Broadway pros including Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty. The show is slated to open on Broadway in the spring.

Gentleman’s Guide also gave Hartford Stage audiences a taste for musical theater. Tresnjak followed up with a revival of Kiss Me Kate and for next season Tresnjak says he anticipates there will be a new musical in the line-up. Details will be announced sooner than the traditional reveal in the spring.

His new high profile keeps Tresnjak an in-demand and busy director. He just finished staging Macbeth starring Placido Domingo for the LA Opera; the director also wrapped up a private pre-Broadway workshop of Anastasia; he’s casting Shakespeare’s A Comedy of Errors, which he will direct for Hartford Stage in January. And Tresnjak, 50, is bracing himself for the twin duties of again directing Anastasia, which opens on Broadway on April 24 and George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan at Hartford Stage which opens May 11.

A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder plays The Bushnell, 166 Capitol Avenue, Hartford through Sunday, Oct. 30. For more information, visit www.bushnell.org or call 860-987-5900.

Frank Rizzo is a freelance journalist who lives in New Haven and New York City. He has been writing about theater and the arts in Connecticut for nearly 40 years.