Artistic liberties are one of the few things that could destroy a play like Joseph Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace. Propelled by romance, murder and the recreations of two kindly old ladies, the show first hit Broadway in 1941 - and, thanks to its homely atmosphere and nonstop references to horror pictures, must have felt dated after only a couple of years. Kesselring's finely-engineered cuckoo clock of a comedy, though virtually devoid of ambiguity, is loaded with unforgettable set pieces and roles that, down to the slightest character, are potentially hilarious.
And all it takes is some director with a penchant for "reinterpretation" to ruin everything.Fortunately Centerstage veteran Irene Lewis is not that director. By embracing a by-the-book approach to their material, Lewis and her perfectly-selected cast have both delivered a spectacular season-opener and paid consistent homage to Kesselring's wit. At the same time they avoid the disorganized period-piece caricature that Arsenic and Old Lace might invite. Kesselring's inventions are flippant, but when conceived with the serious onstage control of Centerstage's troupe, they reveal a playwrighting intelligence that, if now somewhat antiquated, remains morbidly acute.
The entirety of Arsenic and Old Lace takes place in the central hall of the Brewster home in Brooklyn. An oasis of conservative charity untouched by the city outside, the house is inhabited by the two elderly Brewster sisters, Abby (Pamela Payton-Wright) and Martha (Tana Hicken), along with their nephew Teddy (John Ahlin) who believes that he is Theodore Roosevelt. Delusion, however, runs in the family. It turns out that one of the sisters' charities involves poisoning lonely old men - a sort of home-made euthanasia that relies on arsenic-laced elderberry wine - and providing them with private, Christian burials. This horrifies Mortimer (Ian Kahn), a far less deranged Brewster nephew and popular theater critic. After discovering a fresh victim in the living room's window seat, Mortimer spends Lewis' early segments trying to conceal his aunts' hobby from his fianc??e Elaine (Brynn O'Malley).
From here, the scene just gets stranger. Later in the evening, Mortimer's brother Jonathan (John Campion) returns to the home of his youth, hauling along an alcoholic plastic surgeon named Dr. Einstein (Carson Elrod) and a corpse of his own. With his appearance, the last feeble traces of realism evaporate. But this fateful entry sets the stage for a breakneck second act, which finds the Brewster family mixing with loudmouthed cops and the director of a sanitarium called (in a truly inspired touch) Happydale.
Oddly reflecting its characters' habits, Kesselring's script relishes complicated constructions - some of which unfold masterfully, others of which run to irritating lengths before they simply fizzle out. Much like Lewis's last Centerstage feature, Alice Childress' Trouble in Mind, Arsenic and Old Lace clusters together half-a-dozen or so character conflicts and lets them compete for an audience's interest.
Centerstage's Pearlstone Theater is an ample arena for this mayhem, which Lewis organizes with a lucid care that is but one of this production's excellences. After all, few other plays with a substantial cast of senior citizens also call for the services of a fight director (here J. Allen Suddeth). Still, that doesn't mean that the wildest roles are the most powerful, or even the smartest of the night. Despite their centrality to Kesselring's design, the pair of Brewster matrons rank among the production's least obtrusive personages in Hicken's and Payton-Wright's charming turns. Just by doddering in the background and unleashing biting one-liners, the two actresses rule the action. The sisters' nearly-Victorian health and hospitality is nicely enhanced by scenic designer Tony Straiges' cheery living room-about the last place one would expect to find an impromptu congregation of the criminally insane.
Lewis's other actors approach more outlandish material with similar gusto, and similar discipline. Ahlin and Elrod simultaneously exploit their characters' gimmicks and hit an unusual range of emotions, while Campion's unmitigated viciousness is redeemed by a keen command of Jonathan's reactions. Kahn and O'Malley, likewise, are technically flawless. Yet their performances are also too reminiscent of Cary Grant's and Priscilla Lane's in director Frank Capra's 1944 film incarnation-which probably serves as an inevitable gold standard for contemporary Arsenic and Old Lace productions.
Then again, the Capra version-which omits Kesselring's devilish finale and poisons itself on physical comedy-is a model study of the pitfalls of reinvention. There aren't any similarly dramatic alterations in Centerstage's Arsenic and Old Lace, just offbeat details such as Teddy's performance of "Beautiful Dreamer." Kesselring's intelligence and wealth of allusion never translates into humanism-which makes Centerstage's emphasis on his more hermetic flourishes an exceptional strategy. Unable to recast the script into a present-day revelation, Lewis and her actors have decided to let their source stand forth in all its hyper-topical, slightly musty majesty. Even at its advanced age, Arsenic and Old Lace can work like a charm.
Arsenic and Old Lace will be playing at Centerstage through October 14. Call (410)-332-0033 or visit www.centerstage.org for additional information.
