Stage Review - Arsenic and Old Lace (Bremerton Community Theatre)
Stage Review - Arsenic and Old Lace
Presented By: Bremerton Community Theatre - Bremerton, WA
Show Run: June 07 - June 30, 2024
Date Reviewed: Saturday, June 08, 2024 (Opening Weekend)
Reviewed By: Greg Heilman
When American playwright Joseph Kesselring sat down to write Arsenic and Old Lace, his 1939 play about two sisters who take in older gentleman boarders with no attachments, promising them a comfortable place to live out their days, but instead “putting them out of their misery” by way of offering them their own recipe of elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and a pinch of cyanide, his intention was to make the play a “dark drama”. For those familiar with the play, or the 1944 film adaptation starring Cary Grant, it’s clear that his intention never came to pass. Rather, Arsenic and Old Lace is a farce, perhaps the very definition of a black comedy, and at the time it was written and produced most likely a nice escape from some pretty heavy things going on in the world at the time. Local director Dan Estes has a penchant for putting up farcical and dark comedies throughout Kitsap County, and his latest project, on stage at Bremerton Community Theatre’s Robert Montgomery Auditorium, takes on the 80+ year old Arsenic and Old Lace, in a production that features a number of local actors who have a track record of delivering humorous, sometimes satirical, and other times murderous tales to life.
The show runs through June 30 and features Kristi Ann Jacobson and Barbara Miller as the pair of spinster aunts Abby and Martha Brewster, Kristopher Jones as their nephew and misguided theatre critic Mortimer Brewster, Ann Sveen as nephew Teddy Brewster, who literally thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt, and acts that way through dress, speech, and even his digging of the Panama Canal in the Brewster basement, and Ruthann Saunders as Elaine Harper, next door neighbor, minister’s daughter, and soon to be betrothed to Mortimer. Kesselring’s inspiration for the living room where the Brewsters reside, here designed and built by Gary Fetterplace and John Lawson, is the Goerz House in North Newton, Kansas, at Bethel College where the playwright taught for a number of years. The set here is nicely laid out, it facilitates the actors’ movements and Dan’s blocking, provides good sight lines for the key non-set locations, with a centrally framed door to the basement, er, the Panama Canal, a door to the kitchen with a single window that is used creatively to show action behind the door when the sisters leave the living room to prepare sandwiches for their guests, and stairs to Teddy’s room and the sisters’ guest room, and allows enough room for some of the physical comedy in the show to take place.
It’s largely believed that Kesslring took his inspiration for the general plot of the story from a woman in Connecticut, who would promise prospective boarders “lifetime care” and instead poisoned them for their pensions. It’s clear that there is plenty of ways to make this into the drama that the playwright intended, but thankfully producers Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse convinced him otherwise. The result is a pair of sisters who are matter of fact about their actions, they’ve got nothing to hide, after all they’re doing this with the best intentions. And they always make sure to hold services for their boarders, even considerate of their religion after all they wouldn’t want to give a Catholic service to a Methodist. Their plan has been running smoothly, they’ve been tallying up quite the body count, and getting Teddy to help, using the fact that he firmly believes he is Teddy Roosevelt to their advantage, that is until Mortimer enters the picture and finds the lifeless body of a Mr. Hoskins stuffed into the window seat in his aunts’ living room and is quite taken aback, but even more shocked when his aunts fully confess to how Hoskins got there and why. Mortimer’s life is thrown into a tizzy, he had intended to marry Elaine, the aunts’ neighbor and minister’s daughter, but now he’s not sure. Complicating things are his other brother, as if having Teddy as a sibling wasn’t enough, Jonathan who shows up with the oddball Dr. Einstein (not THAT Einstein), Mortimer s brother not quite seeming himself and looking for a place to stay. What follows is a hilarious case of mistaken identities, Mortimer trying to find creative ways to protect his aunts while coming to terms with their actions and how they affect him, and what to do about his fiancée, not to mention the stranger who claims to be his brother. It’s a fun story, and it’s right up Dan’s alley.
Now, the great thing about live theatre is that you never know what you’ll get when you attend a show, and no two performances are ever alike. I attended Saturday evening’s performance, and while I was told that opening night was a hit, unfortunately that’s not what I saw. There’s a funny thing about opening weekends, and I know this from experience. If opening night is a hit, with the cast and crew giving a bit extra with the excitement of an opening, many times the second night is a bit of a drop-off, or at the least out of sync. The opposite can happen, too. Actors can be so up for opening a show, that it’s too much and that performance suffers, it doesn’t come together at all, but the subsequent show is better, the cast having gotten that first performance “out of their systems” so to speak. I believe what I saw on Saturday was an example of the former, a performance with a number of technical snafus, missed cues, and fumbled lines. Jeff Stein had a particularly rough night, as Jonathan Brewster. It felt like he just couldn’t get his arms around the performance, repeating or missing lines, and generally feeling off. Kristopher Jones, in an otherwise wonderful performance, seemed to miss a cue, but was covered nicely by Ruthann Saunders, his other cast mates, and eventually by himself. On the technical side, there were a few misses on lighting and audio cues, but my general feeling is that this is a performance that this cast and crew will put behind them, learn from it, and make the next ones much better. Unfortunately, I just didn’t see them at their best.
All this is not to say there aren’t very good moments in the show. Despite the challenges of the overall performance, Arsenic and Old Lace is still extremely humorous and very entertaining. A lot of this comes down to the lead performances. Kristi Ann and Barbara are wonderful as the spinster aunts Abby and Martha. They’re sweet, they’re honest, and the absolute innocence with which they portray these characters, despite their actions, is just very good, and oh, so funny to watch. Meanwhile, this performance by Kristopher Jones as Mortimer shows a side of his acting that I’ve not seen before, at least to this extent. Kris is very good in comedic performances, most of the time his work in this genre is more subtle, but his work here is over the top physical comedy, and it’s absolutely spot on. It’s a complete comedic performance, utilizing movement, expression, and delivery, and while Kristi Ann’s and Barbara’s performances are funny in their straightforward honesty, Kris’ is more deliberate, and it shines a nice light on the range that he has as an actor. There are a number of other good turns here, including Ruthann Saunders as Mortimer’s fiancée Elaine and Daniel Lunsford Melin as Dr. Einstein. Finally, Ann Sveen as Teddy is a nice surprise. She brings a physical aspect to her delivery of the character that makes Teddy a very humorous part of the show. Rounding out the group is a decent supporting cast, including Travis Johnson as Dr. Harper, Mike Gaynes as both Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Witherspoon, police officers Brophy, Klein, O’Hara, and Lieutenant Rooney (Merissa Ekman, Donna Llewellyn, Owen Eardley, and Abby Dickson respectively).
Where the creative side does work is with Kristi Ann Jacobson’s costuming, especially with the aunts’ wardrobe, and the suits worn by the men. Police uniforms are generally good, and the one worn by Owen Eardley is comically oversized. Lighting is generally good, when the living room lights are on it’s bright, when they’re switched off it is noticeably darker, but not too dark to see what is happening on stage. That said, during scene changes, the level of light is not significantly different than when the lights are off in the living room during while action is taking place on stage. I would suggest that if there was a way to make it darker, while keeping it safe for the actors, during the scene changes, or bringing a panel down, not a full curtain, to obscure the actors, it would make the movement of actors and the odd costume change less visible to the audience.
Arsenic and Old Lace is a dark and farcical comedy that, despite what happens in the story, is a filled with laughs from beginning to end. And despite what I would consider an “off” performance on Saturday night, the BCT production is an entertaining and funny production that is a solid version of this classic story.
Arsenic and Old Lace runs on stage at Bremerton Community Theatre’s Robert Montgomery Auditorium on the C. Keith Birkenfeld Stage through June 30. For more information about the theatre, the show, and for ticket availability and purchase, visit https://www.bctshows.com/.
