Feb 8, 2008 3 min read

FLATWOODS – Flatwoods Productions will open the winter season on Feb. 29 and March 1-2 with “Arsenic and Old Lace” by Joseph Kesselring. The show will be presented at Curfew Grange in Flatwoods. Performances will be at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday with a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at the door or may be reserved by calling 724-366-7923

Curfew Grange is located at the intersection of Route 201 South and Buena Vista Road in Flatwoods (across from the cemetery).

Dinner is available before all three shows. Dinner includes chicken noodle soup, salad, choice of either stuffed chicken breast or roast beef, mashed potatoes, vegetable, bread and butter, soda, coffee or tea and vanilla ice cream. There is a cost for dinner theater, and reservations are required.

Desserts may be upgraded the night of the performance for an additional charge. Chocolate cake with chocolate/coffee frosting or chocolate cheesecake is available.

“Arsenic and Old Lace” is one of the most famous comedy successes both in New York and on the road. Two charming and innocent ladies, Abby and Martha Brewster, populate their cellar with the remains of socially and religiously “acceptable” roomers whom they just happen to poison with “a little arsenic and a drop of cyanide and a pinch of strychnine” added to the elderberry wine they serve.

Add in the antics of their brother who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt; another brother, Mortimer, who happens to be a New York Theater Critic; the elder brother, Jonathan, who is a criminal and happens to resemble Boris Karloff; and his friend Doctor Einstein, a plastic surgeon.

When Mortimer finds out what his aunts have been doing, he can’t quite believe it and he has a terrible time convincing them that what they are doing is wrong. Complications arise when the older brother Jonathan shows up with a dead body in his rumble seat and a confrontation occurs between the two brothers. The policemen have a way of showing up at the most opportune and inopportune times.

The show opened in New York City on Jan. 10, 1941, and ran for 1,444 performances. Under its original title “Bodies in Our Cellar,” the play was sent to actress Dorothy Stickney, who was then playing opposite her husband Howard Lindsay in “Life With Father.”

Lindsay and his partner Russel Crouse bought the play, rewrote much of it and produced it themselves.

After a tryout in Baltimore, the show opened to rave notices at the Fulton Theatre on Broadway. There was a sensation at the box office the next day, because not enough tickets had been printed to accommodate the demand. With 11 days, the first profit check was sent out to the investors. The London run, which began in 1942, reached 1,337 performances – almost as many as the American production.

Of course, any show this big would be coveted by Hollywood. In 1944, the movie version was released. Directed by Frank Capra, it starred the hottest leading man of the day, Cary Grant, as Mortimer. Josephine Hull and Jean Adair repeated their stage roles. Raymond Massey appeared in the Karloff part, and Peter Lorre parodied his usual screen persona as the plastic surgeon.

A television adaptation with Helen Hayes and Lillian Gish was broadcast in the 1960s. Jean Stapleton and Polly Holiday played the Brewster sisters in a 1986 Broadway revival. A clever touch in this production had all the poisoned old men emerge through the cellar door at curtain call to take a bow.