By Dale King
Lake Worth Playhouse is riding the crest of some first-class theatrical productions this season. The one that drops the final curtain on its three-week engagement Sunday is one of the best, a classic dark comedy from the 1930s that still packs lots of laughs today.
Arsenic and Old Lace is one of a dozen plays by Joseph Kesselring — and easily his best. The 1941 tale that unfolds in the living room of the ornately decorated Brewster home in Brooklyn became a movie in 1944 which solidified Cary Grant’s status as a true comedian on the silver screen.
The play focuses on the strange tale of two spinster sisters who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them over dinner with a glass of homemade elderberry wine laced with three deadly substances.
Siblings Abby Brewster (Clelia Patrizio) and Martha Brewster (Jeanne O’Connor) are sisters with a penchant for homicide, burying their victims in the cellar. This odd behavior doesn’t seem to faze anyone. In fact, it fits perfectly with the maniacal ravings of their crazy brother, Teddy Brewster (David Zide), who thinks he is actually Teddy Roosevelt. In his altered state, Teddy perceives such grave excavations to be elements of constructing the Panama Canal.
Another psychotic brother soon shows up. Jonathan Brewster (Daniel Eilola) is a murderous sibling who arrives without warning, and without welcome. To hide his true identity, he has undergone plastic surgery from an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein (Patrick Albano), a character based on real-life gangland surgeon Joseph Moran. With his face redone, Jonathan resembles horror-film actor Boris Karloff, is something of an inside joke, because Karloff actually portrayed Jonathan in the original Broadway production.
Not everyone is crazy. Mortimer Brewster is one of the sane characters, and he has to go about dealing with his screwy aunts, nutty doctor, loony brother and cops visiting at all hours of the day and night. Who better to play that role than Lake Worth Playhouse’s resident wacko, Jason Leadingham, who was the off-the-wall visitor in The Foreigner and the subservient Patsy in Spamalot?
The plot of Arsenic and Old Lace is fairly simple, though there are plenty of loose ends and complicated twists and an unexpected ending. Mortimer has to find rational explanations for the antics going on in his aunts’ home and still go through with his marriage to Elaine Harper (Kirsten Kuzmirek) without telling her that his family is nuts. It’s a tough task, particularly when Teddy goes “charging” up the stairway as if it were San Juan Hill.
Mort sums it up succinctly. “Insanity runs in my family,” he tells Elaine. “Actually, it gallops.”
Lake Worth Playhouse has corralled an outstanding cast of characters who truly know how to be characters. Arsenic and Old Lace is goofy and fun and requires nothing of the audience except to sit back and watch the revelry run its course.
The production itself had to overcome some last-minute glitches, but it did so very well. Eilola, who was to be director, took over the Jonathan Brewster role when the actor who was to do it had to leave. Playhouse Artistic Director Jodie Dixon-Mears took over directorial chores. Actor Tom Turner, who was cast as Rev. Harper, stepped in to assume the role of Mr. Witherspoon as well.
As the killer spinster sisters, Patrizio and O’Connor have great chemistry. They are charming and delightfully innocent in what they perceive to be a way to serve mankind.
Leadingham doesn’t disappoint. He is just as frenetic as he has been in past productions. With plenty to keep him busy, his character spends a lot of time whipping around the stage.
Zide is loopy and loud in his characterization of Teddy Roosevelt. Kuzmirek gives the audience an intelligent, clear-voiced Elaine, who is effortlessly believable as the loving and frustrated fiancée. She is also an intelligent lady — a rare commodity on stage in the 1930s.
Eilola is a big guy — literally — and more than adequately fills the Karloff shoes as Jonathan. His stature makes it easy for him to scare the little folks who inhabit the stage.
Doing more than an apt job as the alcoholic Dr. Einstein, Albano is frightening in a softer, gentler way, but is still a character to beware of. It’s not his first crazy role at Lake Worth. He was one of the inmates in One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Arsenic and Old Lace closes with a matinee Sunday at the Lake Worth Playhouse, 713 Lake Ave., Lake Worth. Call 561-586-6410 for tickets and information.