Murder isn’t funny – except when it’s hilarious.

No, I haven’t lost my marbles. I’m talking about “A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder” at The Old Globe, an import from (and co-production with) Hartford Stage, playing through April 14.

The Globe’s old friend Darko Tresnjak, now artistic director at Hartford Stage, returns to direct this rollicking, witty musical based on a 1907 book by Roy Horniman.

Time may stand still when the shutter snaps, but now it's just dragging for war photographer Sarah (Mhari Sandoval), sent home from Iraq to recover from a car bomb which took the life of her "fixer” and interpreter Tariq and left her with broken bones, facial lacerations and pangs of guilt over his death.

Now she shares her New York loft with freelance journalist and lover of eight-plus years Jamie (Francis Gercke), shell-shocked himself and home on leave, but still beating himself up over leaving Iraq earlier and not being there to protect her.

Ah, the Roaring Twenties, when the Capone gang ruled Chicago, Prohibition brought speakeasies, and mouthy flappers in short hair and short skirts were in abundance.

Some of those women, taking advantage of the easy availability of hardware, wiped out their philandering (or simply annoying) spouses or boyfriends, landing in prison. Now they sing us their stories from the women’s cell block in the Cook County jail, under the watchful eye of Matron “Mama” Morton (Ria Carey).

“It doesn’t do any good to remember.” -- Ludie Watts

For Carrie Watts (Sylvia M’Lafi Thompson), an old woman who grew up in rural Bountiful but no longer able to live alone, the past five years in a too-small Houston apartment with her ineffectual son Ludie (Walter Murray) and shrewish daughter-in-law Jessie Mae (Yolanda Franklin) have been a trial, and memory is the most pleasant part of her existence.

Mrs. Watts spends her days puttering around the apartment, cleaning, cooking and humming an old hymn (which drives Jessie Mae to distraction, or at least to griping).