I PROMISE that I am not going to make you read comedy murder mysteries all year! I did promise you a Belgian play, but very embarrassingly I seem to have lost the scripts (PLEASE no-one tell my friend about this, she thinks I'm incompetent enough as it is, I know they are here SOMEWHERE!)
And so, at change of plan! At the end of January's ECC play reading I asked for suggestions and 'a comedy' was requested! Browsing through the library I came across this, and realised we've never read it - and it is quite funny (I hope!) It was performed by ATC some years ago, and my memory of it was that it was fun!
Arsenic and Old Lace
This is of course best known as a 1944 film starring Cary Grant and directed by Frank Capra. However it was based on Joseph Kesselring's 1941 play. The contract with the play’s producers stipulated that the film would not be released until the Broadway run had ended. The original planned release date was September 30, 1942. The play was a tremendous hit, running for three and a half years, so the film was not released until 1944.
The play is set in 1944 (or as the script says 'The Present') in New York, but accents are not required!
Mortimer Brewster: a writer who has repeatedly denounced marriage as "an old-fashioned superstition"
Elaine Harper: the minister's daughter who grew up next door to him.
Abby Brewster: One of Mortimer's aunts who raised him in the old family home.
Martha Brewster: His other aunt.
Teddy Brewster: Mortimer's brother, who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt
Jonathan Brewster: Mortimer's brother, whose face resembles that of Frankenstein
Dr. Herman Einstein: Plastic Surgeon
There is of course more than this to all of the characters!
Kesselring does not appear to have been a prolific writer, and indeed Wikipedia describes Arsenic and Old Lace as his 'Masterpiece'. I think its humour has stood the test of time, although it is definitely not a play for today!
