Arsenic And Old Lace |
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Review by Willard Manus As Walter
Kerr said about the 1928 Broadway comedy, The Front Page,
the play was like a watch that laughed. The same could have
been said two decades later about ARSENIC AND OLD LACE. Written by Joseph
Kesselring as a heavy mystery drama, the play was turned into a slick
farce by Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse, who in addition to writing
comedies like Life With Father were skilled play doctors.
Their uncredited rewrite resulted in a hit play: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
ran for three years on Broadway and later became a Hollywood flick starring
Cary Grant. Director
Elina de Santos has assembled a twelve-person cast of actors who are splendid
at farce, beginning with Jacque Lynn Colton and Sheelagh Cullen, who play
the Brewster sisters, two old biddies who kill their elderly male boarders
for humanitarian reasons by plying them with arsenic-laced
elderberry wine. Alex Elliott-Funk has a ball playing their equally dotty
brother, who is convinced he is the reincarnation of Teddy Roosevelt and
is forever running up and down the staircase, tootling away on a trumpet
and yelling Charge! as he fights the battle of San Juan Hill
again. |