I remember seeing part (but not all) of the 1944 movie classic “Arsenic & Old Lace,” starring Cary Grant and directed by the great Frank Capra, one day during my teenage years as I flipped through my 13 channels before the days of cable TV. From what I could remember, I thought the movie, adapted from the 1939 play by Joseph Kesselring, was a “cute, but dark” comedy.
So, seeing the Wesley Chapel Theater Group (WCTG)’s performance of “Arsenic & Old Lace” at the Zephyrhills Lions Club on Apr. 26 was basically like seeing it for the first time. Directed by Colleen DeFelice (who told the audience she had played one of the lead roles, Aunt Abby, 13 years before), WCTG’s “Arsenic” was a fun, if understandably dated, macabre comedy about some murderous — and sometimes hilarious — family members.
The play starred Alex Peña in the Grant role of Mortimer Brewster, who loves but doesn’t seem to want to marry his cheeky, somewhat pushy girlfriend Elaine (performed to perfection by Aliza Rivera). Mortimer is a theatre critic who lives in Brooklyn with his seemingly sweet spinster aunts Abby (played by Danielle Warren) and Martha (Jennifer Peña), while Elaine lives with her father, Rev. Dr. Harper, across a graveyard from Mortimer, his aunts and his brother Teddy (Chad Allen). Teddy believes he is actually former U.S. President Teddy Roosevelt — and everyone who visits the Brewster house plays along because Teddy is a little craz…let’s just say “out there.”
“Arsenic” takes its first sinister turn when Mortimer finds a dead body in the house and Abby and Martha admit that there are eleven more dead bodies buried in the basement — all lonely, older men who drank their homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine “and just a pinch of cyanide.” Teddy has been digging the men’s graves in the basement, thinking they are locks for his Panama Canal, and believing that the men died of yellow fever.
But, it turns out that Mortimer’s long lost brother Jonathan (David Sparano), “who looks like Boris Karloff” (and was actually portrayed by Karloff during the stage play’s five-year run on Broadway, and by Raymond Massey in the movie), also is a murderer. Jonathan has traveled the world with Dr. Einstein (James Hernandez), a plastic surgeon who changes Jonathan’s face after every murder. The two have brought along a dead body of their own to dispose of at the Brewster home and Jonathan plans to murder Mortimer (and maybe his aunts and Teddy, too) to replace his brother in the house when he also discovers his aunts’ most recent victim, thinking Mortimer was the killer.
But, Officer O’Hara (Arturo Delacruz) shows up to pitch his own play idea to Mortimer, which throws a monkey wrench into Jonathan’s plans. Jonathan ends up being arrested, Mortimer signs the papers committing Teddy to a sanitarium and Abby and Martha agree to join Teddy (convinced by Mortimer to keep them from being prosecuted for the murders). Mortimer and Elaine can finally live happily ever after, when Abby and Martha tell Mortimer that he was actually adopted and not related by blood to his murderous family. Still with me?
WCTG’s “Arsenic & Old Lace” was funnier than the plot actually sounds and was well-received, with some out-loud laughs from the sold-out crowds of maybe 100 people at each performance.
The next WCTG performances will be “A Night of One Acts,” also at the Zephyrhills Lions Club, the weekend of July 12-13.
WCTG, which does not have a permanent home of its own, would love to find one in Wesley Chapel and will definitely need to raise more money to be able to afford one.
To make a donation, volunteer to join the group or for tickets to “A Night of One Acts,” visit WesleyChapelTheaterGroup.org. — GN
