Arsenic and Old Lace

Synopsis

In a quaint Victorian house in Brooklyn, Abby and Martha Brester have quietly poisoned twelve old men and buried them in the cellar. Their nephew arrives, a conman with yet another corpse and mayhem. A timeless classic on Broadway and the West End.

Our Review:

Anne Morley-Priestman - 8 October 2012

As comedy thrillers bordering on farce go, Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace is surely the epitome of the genre. It’s been revived in a smart new production by Tony Casement for which designer Dawn Allsopp has created a set crammed with intriguing details and which works wonderfully well for the special effects required by this story of two dear old maiden ladies in late 1930s Brooklyn with a cellar (not to mention the attic) full of grisly secrets.

There’s something not quite normal about the whole of the Brewster family, as we rapidly discover. Miss Martha and Miss Abby have three peculiar nephews for a start. Teddy thinks he’s the late President Teddy Roosevelt. Mortimer works for the local paper and has been shifted sideways to the post of drama critic from that of real estate reporter; he also is in love (well, sort of) with the daughter of the local Episcopalian minister. Jonathan not on...

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