The Widower in the Window Seat – a review of “Arsenic & Old Lace”

By Michael Buzzelli

Spinsters Abby (Joyce Miller) and Martha (Cindy Berg) Brewster believe they’ve found the solution to curing loneliness by dispatching elderly gentlemen to the afterlife with their diabolical concoction, a  glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide, in Joseph Kesselring’s black comedy, “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

The Brewster women’s beleaguered nephew, Mortimer (Brian Ferris), returns to their Brooklyn home to pick up his sweetheart, Elaine (Chelsea Contino Eicher), to take her to the theater, when discovers a dead man in the window seat.

Mortimer learns that there are eleven bodies in the basement. Mr. Hoskins, the widower in the window seat, is the twelfth victim or the aunt’s loving charity work, i.e., the macabre murder spree.

He plans on pinning the murders on his loony brother, Teddy (Cassidee Knott Huey), because he already has the papers drawn up to send Teddy to a sanitarium because Teddy thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt. Teddy’s been burying the bodies in the basement because he thinks he’s digging the Panama Canal and that the men are victims of Yellow Fever.

Meanwhile, Mortimer’s dastardly brother Jonathan (John Hermann) and his assistant, Dr. Einstein (Dennis Taylor) hightail it to Brooklyn to hide out in the Brewster home. They’re on the run for killing twelve men all over the world.

Realizing his sweet old aunt’s have the same body count, Jonathan decides it’s time to take out his brother, Mortimer, to get the higher score.

Director Erin Bock’s take on the timeless tale of murder, mayhem and madcap comedy is delightful. The director mines the show for all the comedy gold.

While the play takes a moment to get going, it speeds along once Ferris pops through the front door.  He is hilarious as the nervous nelly who keeps finding dead men in his childhood home. Ferris fidgets and fumbles with grace and style. “Arsenic and Old Lace” rests on the shoulders of the lead actor, and Ferris handles the responsibility with aplomb.

Miller and Berg are the perfect pair for Abby and Martha. They perform their characters with sweetness and  sincerity, ramping up the laughs.  Miller gets the first funny line of the show when she says, “I’m beginning to think that that Hitler person isn’t very Christian.”

Hermann is properly menacing as Jonathan Brewster, an escapee from the Home for the Criminally Insane in South Bend, Indiana. He delivers his lines in a slow, methodical way, devilishly calm.

Taylor’s Einstein is channeling Peter Lorre, who played the same character in the film adaptation of the play.

There are also some fun cameo roles by Alex Blair as O’Hara and Brian Kadlecik as Witherspoon.

Brian Nath’s set design is a true beauty to behold. He makes great use of the unique stage, which has several layers.

Berg also provided the costumes for the show. Martha and Abby’s funeral blacks are particularly impressive, replete with lacy high collars with brooches.

Side note: Unlike drama critic Mortimer Brewster, this review was not written on the way to the theater.

“Arsenic and Old Lace” is a frolicking romp with some laugh out loud moments. The play was originally performed during World War II to be a pleasant diversion from the ugliness of the outside world, and it remains to be a pleasant diversion from the ugliness of the outside world.

-MB

“Arsenic & Old Lace” runs until March 2 at 20 Wabash Ave, Hickory, PA, United States, Pennsylvania 15340. For more information, click here.