NEW YORK, N.Y. – It will be a long, lingering death for Broadway’s “A Gentleman’s Guide to Love & Murder.”

The 2014 Tony Award-winner for best musical will close on Jan. 17.

The show is about an impoverished man who discovers he’s ninth in line to inherit a fortune, so he decides to eliminate the eight heirs of the D’Ysquith family standing in his way.

It stars Jefferson Mays, who plays all eight D’Ysquith victims — two women and six men — some more than once. When the show closes, he will have died onstage more than 6,000 times.

A national tour kicks off this month with stops in upstate New York, Illinois, Ohio, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Nebraska, Iowa, Arizona, Tennessee, California, Minnesota, Colorado, Utah, Texas, Washington, Nevada and Washington, D.C.

The Broadway show had a slow start in 2013, but the musical puffed along. It features a book by Robert L. Freedman, music by Steven Lutvak, and wry lyrics by Freedman and Lutvak. It beat out “Aladdin,” ”After Midnight” and “Beautiful — The Carole King Musical” for the top crown at the 2014 Tonys.

It earned back its $7.5 million capitalization this spring and has earned some $60 million, but has slumped of late at the box office, usually earning only half of its $959,000 potential in the past few months.

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Online: http://www.agentlemansguidebroadway.com