‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ a delicious concoction

SOMERS — There’s nothing like a little elderberry wine to make an evening complete, especially when it starts with dinner at the Joanna’s Café and Banquet facilities and ends with “Arsenic and Old Lace” by the Village Players, who are celebrating their 40th year.

Their spring production of a story born in Windsor is a perennial favorite in Connecticut, and for good reason.

It has a couple of zany and lovable old aunts, Abby and Martha, who live in an old cavernous home where they perform what they consider acts of charity — they poison lonely old men with wine laced with a lethal dose of arsenic..

Wendy Peterson and Shirley E. Warner play Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha with good cheer.

As the play opens in 1940s Brooklyn, Abby has just performed one of her acts of charity on a gentleman whom she couldn’t get into the basement by herself before visitors arrive.

She stashes the “Methodist” in a window seat until later when her nephew, Teddy Brewster, can take him down to the unfinished basement and give him a proper burial.

John Lepore plays the deluded Teddy who is convinced that he is President Theodore Roosevelt. When asked why the aunts don’t disabuse Teddy of his delusion, they say that they tried once but he hid under the bed and wouldn’t come out.

Better to have him think he is somebody he isn’t, than be nobody at all, they say. Crazy logic, but then, it’s a pretty crazy household.

Teddy digs locks in the basement floor, which doubles as the Panama Canal, and where he buries the “yellow fever victims.”

Their other nephew, Mortimer Brewster, played by Doug Stoyer, is a newspaperman with the odious job of being a theater critic, much to his own disgust.

Playwright Joseph Kesselring pokes some fun here at theater critics, when Aunt Abby says to Rev. Dr. Harper (John McKone) that Mortimer hates the theater, but assures his aunts that the theater will be finished “in a year or two.”

Kesselring based his play on the real-life serial murderer, Amy Archer-Gilligan, who ran a boarding house for the elderly right here in Connecticut, in Windsor, in the early 1900s, allegedly poisoning 60 old men who lived there. She was eventually convicted of one count of murder.

Moritmer’s other brother, the criminal psychopath Jonathan Brewster, (played with menace by Al Mulvey) slinks into the household of his youth with his accomplice, the plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein, a sympathetic David Crowell.

The two decide to set up shop at the old homestead and bring a dead body along with them, just for good measure.

Lots of mayhem ensues when Mortimer finds out about his aunts’ appalling “charity” and has to deal with his maniac older brother to boot.

Mortimer tells his aunts that their behavior has “turned into a very bad habit.”

Mortimer also just got engaged to the girl next door, Elaine Harper (Regina Erpenbeck), and then decides he can’t marry her because he doesn’t want to perpetuate the crazy Brewster genes.

Various characters add to the commotion, including police officers O’Hara (Tim Lavery) and Klein (Tyler J. Anderson), Lt. Rooney (Justin Martin), and another unsuspecting gentleman, Mr. Gibbs, played by Malcolm Chadbourne.

The black-and-white period costumes worked well, and I really like the black-and-white motif of the single set of the Brewster household. Costumes by Michelle Tyler and set design and décor by Franc Aguas.

Director Gus Rousseau keeps the pace of this play on the move, but there are occasional pauses between the actors’ lines that feel unnatural.

I like Rousseau’s extra touches too, such as when Dr. Einstein takes a body from the living room and we hear him tumbling down the stairs into an unseen basement.

Written in 1939, this play continues to endure through the generations, making mincemeat of Mortimer’s prediction that the theater will go away in a couple of years.

It’s a strange and wacky world of murder and affection that make “Arsenic and Old Lace” a fun and entertaining night at the dinner theater.

Stage review

3 stars

Arsenic and Od Lace

Theater: The Village Players.

Location: Joanne’s Café and Banquet House, 145 Main St., Somers.

Production: Written by Joseph Kesselring. Directed by Gus Rousseau. Produced by Diane Preble. Associate producer Betty Domer. Technical director Justin Martin. Set design by Franc Aguas. Lighting and sound by Ben Bugden. Stage manager Sherry Samborski. Props and stage manager Sue Moak. Costumes by Michelle Tyler.

Running time: 2 hours plus one intermission.

Show times: Friday and Saturday, through April 16. Social hour starting at 6 p.m. Dinner at 7 p.m. Show at 8:15 p.m.

Tickets: $35, including dinner, with cash bar. Call 860-749-0245 for reservations. Visit their website atwww.somersvillageplayers.org

Actor.................CHARACTER
Wendy Peterson …................. Abby Brewster
Shirley E. Warner …............ Martha Brewster
John Lepore .......................… Teddy Brewster
Doug Stoyer ................… Mortimer Brewster
Al Mulvey .....................… Jonathan Brewster
David Crowell …............................ Dr. Einstein
Regina Erpenbeck …................ Elaine Harper
Tim Lavery ............................… Officer O’Hara
Tyler J. Anderson ....................… Officer Klein
Justin Martin …............................... Lt. Rooney
John McKone .....................… Rev. Dr. Harper
Mr. Witherspoon
Malcolm Chadbourne ................… Mr. Gibbs

4 stars Excellent 3 stars Good 2 stars Fair 1 star Poor