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To say that his latest acting assignment requires Jefferson Mays to wear many hats would be clichéd, but also apt. The Tony Award-winning star of I Am My Own Wife and more recently Gore Vidal's The Best Man is a self-described "hat fetishist." Being cast in eight stylized roles in the musical A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder gave Mays the opportunity to indulge that particular mania with a vengeance.

When he showed up at rehearsals for a workshop of the musical at Hartford Stage, Mays arrived with bags full of hats — bowlers, taupe silk hats, tweed cloth cap, even a topper owned by his wife that would be transformed into a beekeeper's hat.

I Am My Own Wife had more than 37 characters, although as Mays notes, every last one of them was "by default wearing that little black dress, string of pearls and head scarf." In Gentleman's Guide, a co-production between Hartford Stage and the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, Mays plays the entire line of the fictionalized D'Ysquith family, working his way up and down the ladder of Edwardian aristocracy from earls to actresses, from musclemen to missionaries.

Monty Navarro (played by Ken Barnett), an illegitimate heir who is ninth in line to the D'Ysquith earldom, sets his sights on improving his position and targets the eight D'Ysquiths ahead of him. Film mavens may recognize Gentlemen's Guide from the 1949 film "Kind Hearts and Coronets," which — like Gentleman's Guide was also inspired by the Roy Harniman novel "Israel Rank." In that film, Alec Guinness played eight roles, but Guinness had days of shooting and multiple takes.

Mays has two and a half hours. Bring on the hats.

	Jeffeson Mays as Lord Adalbert D'Ysquith in A Gentleman's Guide to Love and Murder.
	Photo by Henry DiRocco

"It always makes me sound really shallow, but I work from the outside in," says the Connecticut-born actor speaking by phone during a rehearsal break in San Diego. "I try to think of what a character looks like, what types of shoes he'll wear and I try to wear to rehearsals something that feels more or less like what the costume will be. We used the hats for signifiers of the changing characters and with that, of course, I would change my voice or my stance."

"Clothes are very important," he adds. "I think it's also getting the visual idea of what my character looks like before I go out and start rehearsing. It's totally demoralizing to look at stills because you never look anything like who you imagine you're playing. It just looks like me in a wig."

Or a muscle suit, a top hat, a bustle, a set of false teeth or anything else he and costume designer Linda Cho deemed properly D'Ysquithian. Mays is a research buff as well as a performer and he and Cho had numerous discussions about costume choices including the suggestion that Cho bring some steam punk elements into some of the clothing choices.

Clothes aside, Mays taking on the D'Ysquiths has been a workout. Even with the play's Hartford Stage run completed a few months ago, the actor reports being "bloody but unbowed," his once stiff upper lip a bit the worse for wear.

"A lot of mustaches are applied hastily and taken off in the wings," he says. "I had a face full of sores by the end of the run. I'll try to figure out something." Mustaches, in fact, are positively the easy part.

"My costumes open in the back and there's a zipper," he says. "So I finish a scene, throw myself into the darkness of the wings and am immediately set upon by three muscular women who rip my clothes off….It sounds more fun contemplating it than it does doing it….So they tear my clothes off, I jump in the new outfit and they pick me up and literally shove me back on stage. It's like the pit crew at the Indy 500."

You may need a scorecard to sort out the diverse D'Ysquiths a few of whom admittedly make little more than an extended cameo. Mays gave us a tour through the family along with some thoughts and musings. Read on!

	Mays as Asquith "Assie" D'Ysquith Jr.
	Photo by Henry DiRocco

Asquith "Assie" D'Ysquith Jr. — Young Dandy
Mays: "He's a sort of a gap-toothed rogue with a pencil-thin mustache painted on his lip and a bowler hat that he wears at a rakish angle. I try to embody him with some horrible characteristic of the British upper class society of that time. He's a predator of the under class, a snob and a dandy with a rattan cane that he flourishes."

	Mays, with Ken Barnett, as Reverend Lord Ezekial D'Ysquith.
	Photo by Henry DiRocco

Reverend Lord Ezekial D'Ysquith — a Man of Limited Intellect, Rather Too Fond of his Port
Mays: "I have these false teeth that I got from a novelty store in Manhattan that I slip into my mouth for Reverend Ezekial. That's fun, but it does make speaking rather difficult."

	Mays, with Heather Ayers, as Lord Adalbert D'Ysquith.
	Photo by Henry DiRocco

Lord Adalbert D'Ysquith, the 8th Earl of D'Ysquith — an Arrogant Formidable Presence
Mays: "We wanted him to stand out. I suggested to Linda the pink coat, the red crimson fox hatting, the top hat, jodhpurs and boots and riding crop or a whip with the antlers at the end. And gloves. He's always in full fox-hunting regalia even at the dinner table."

Lord Asquith D'Ysquith — Elderly Banker Not Usually Given to Public Displays of Emotion
Mays: "He's a man of business. I embraced the stereotypes from all the Ealing Studios comedies I saw. He has the mourning clothes, the top hat and a cane. He seems a bit feeble."

	Mays, with Ken Barnett, as Henry D'Ysquith.
	Photo by Henry DiRocco

Henry D'Ysquith — a Landowner and Country Squire
Mays: "We gave him the knee breeches, gators and cloth cap. One of my wife's hats with fly netting on it became the beekeeper's bonnet."

	Mays as Lady Hyacinth D'Ysquith.
	Photo by Henry DiRocco

Lady Hyacinth D'Ysquith — Missionary, a Woman of a Certain Age
Mays: "She's a great big dreadnought of a woman with huge breasts and an enormous bustle. In many ways, she's the most masculine member of the family despite her sex. She carries a parasol which she brandishes like a mace or a broad sword."

Major Lord Bartholomew D'Ysquith — a Ridiculously Musclebound Health Nut
Mays: "We have him in this absurd 19th-century workout costume with leather belts and buckles and garters and snaps and trusses. He has this outlandish handlebar mustache. The costumes do so much of the work. If you put on a muscle suit, it affects the way move. You can't put your arms down to the side or do anything useful with them."

Lady Salome D'Ysquith Pumphrey — a Flamboyantly Awful Actress
Mays: "She appears playing Hedda Gabler. We made the wonderful discovery that she would probably be doing this in Danish which — I didn't know this — was the language of the Norwegian elite and the language that Ibsen wrote in. So for this role, I spent my time learning the words in Danish. It's a very short appearance. I go out there, saw the air a bit, speak Danish and blow my brains out."

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Mays explains, "Several times during the run at Hartford, I would hear bits of conversations in the restroom to the effect of, 'Oh, isn't it wonderful that they got actors who look more or less the same to play the various members of the family.' That made me both very happy and very depressed. I was heartened by the fact that they weren't sure how many actors were playing the role, but they obviously hadn't read the program." Read more about A Gentlemen's Guide to Love and Murder, which has lyrics by Robert L. Freedman and Steven Lutvak. music by Lutvak
and book by Freedman. 

(Evan Henerson is a Los Angeles-based arts writer and former theater critic for the Los Angeles Daily News. His work has appeared in American Theatre, Backstage and Stage Directions.)