If you are looking for a laugh, head to Bowie for Bowie Community Theatre’s version of Joseph Kesselring’s classic Arsenic and Old Lace. The three-act dark comedy blends action, senselessness, a corpse in a window seat, and a trumpet. It is set in 1939 Brooklyn, New York, during the Depression on the eve of WW II — when Americans needed a laugh — and features outdated and insensitive portrayals of psychiatric conditions.
Director Randy Tusing assembled a 12-member cast who kept improvising their characters and interplay between fellow players. “They have had all of us, and each other, laughing out loud as they brought their fun and played, continuing from auditions through the last of rehearsals,” he says in his director’s notes. “They never stopped creating their characters, trying different things, or playing off each other.”
One of the big plusses for the cast is the way that Tusing’s direction sets them free to act every bit the heavily drawn characters they are. Arsenic is a play that celebrates 1939 American stereotypes: The loving aunties (Joanne Bauer and Kim Bessler), the WASP hero Mortimer (Joey Rolandelli), the eccentric brother (Amanda Matousek), the perfect fiancée (Eliza Geib), the nasty villain (Roy Hammond), the mad German doctor (Marc Rehr), the Irish police officers (Alan Barnett and Savannah Brooks), their naïve rookie (Emery Sheriff), their no-nonsense lieutenant (Dionne Belk), and of course, a couple of lonely old men ripe for eternal rest (John Cholod and Barnett).
The cast also get to wear Sarah Schauffler’s 1940s costumes and stupefied expressions of their own as chaos ensues around them. Elaine Harper’s (Geib) blue costume at the beginning was gorgeous. She looked nothing like a reverend’s daughter. I suspect it was sexy by WW II standards. Harper also made a strong presence with her suddenly irrational relationship with a man who just asked her to marry him.
Community theater vets Bauer (Martha Brewster) and Bessler (Abby Brewster) steal the show. They are charitable providing toys to the police for children, food for the sick, and always looking to help poor, lonesome old men. While they think their assistance for the men folk is compassionate, others, namely their excitable nephew Mortimer (Rolandelli), have a far less Christian name for it — murder.
When Martha matter-of-factly explains the sisters’ position, Mortimer doesn’t see the charity in it. The sisters calmly and rationally tell Mortimer they have done this 11 times before the body Mortimer has discovered in the window seat. The aunts are willing to tell anyone about their “service” as if they will not face consequences. The twist is that they do not get caught. No one can believe that the sweet Brewster sisters would have poisoned their boarders. Even if they did, one would have to be crazy to bury the corpses in the basement.
Only Mortimer and his evil brother Jonathan (Hammond) are crazy enough to believe it. As fate would have it, Jonathan has killed a dozen people around the world. Now he and the aunts find themselves in competition, which leads to a hilarious finale.
Mortimer, is basically a good-hearted cynic. He is newly engaged. Mortimer cares for his aunts, but his life is turned upside-down as he tries to untangle their crazy, homicidal dilemma. Rolandelli plays the role very loud and is sometimes indecisive. A theater critic, Mortimer is at his best explaining how unrealistic today’s stage is. As he explains the awful plot of a play he reviewed the night before to Dr. Einstein (Rehr), Jonathan is doing exactly what Mortimer describes to capture his brother. Jonathan’s intense listening and the faces made by Dr. Einstein and Jonathan during Mortimer’s monologue help to power the scene.
What would Arsenic by without a third nephew who thought he was Theodore Roosevelt serving his term in the White House while building the Panama Canal in the basement? Through the various costume changes, over-accentuated military steps around the house, yellow-fever victims, and those damned trumpet blasts that disturbed neighbors as Teddy called cabinet meetings or charged up the steps, Matousek brings all of Teddy’s idiosyncrasies to full bloom.
Running time: Two hours and 45 minutes with 15-minute and 10-minute intermissions.
Arsenic and Old Lace plays on weekends through September 8, 2024, presented by Bowie Community Theatre performing at Bowie Playhouse, 16500 White Marsh Park Dr., Bowie, MD. Purchase tickets ($25, general; $20, seniors and students) online, by phone at the BCT Hotline at 301-805-0219, or by email (boxoffice@bctheatre.com) prior to the performance date.
Arsenic and Old Lace
Drama by Joseph Kesselring
Directed by Randy Tusing