Arsenic & Old Lace
Written by, Joseph Kesselring
Production Date: August 10-12 & 17-19, 2012
Location: The Byng Community Theater
Director: Brandon Byng
Assistant Director: Debra Jolly
The play is a farcical dark comedy revolving around Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and local police in Brooklyn, NY, as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide”; a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home (which then serve as graves for the aunts’ victims); and a murderous brother who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein to conceal his identity and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff.
Original Cast:
Abby Brewster……………………………………………………………………….Karen Fuller
The Rev. Dr. Harper / Mr. Gibbs / Mr. Witherspoon………………………Bill Koehne
Teddy Brewster……………………………………………………………………….Early Fuller
Officer Brophy………………………………………………………………….Conner Suddick
Officer Klein…………………………………………………………………David Woosencraft
Martha Brewster…………………………………………………………………Sharon Fischer
Elaine Harper………………………………………………………………………Megan Sopata
Mortimer Brewster……………………………………………………………………..Bill Wons
Jonathan Brewster………………………………………………………………..Brandon Byng
Dr. Einstein……………………………………………………………………….Preston Pelegrin
Officer O’Hara……………………………………………………………………..James Sopata
Lieutenant Rooney……………………………………………………………….Jerah Doxtator
