Arsenic and Old Lace

The Beverly Theatre Guild presents Arsenic and Old Lace Director: Jack Phillips. Assistant Director: Frankie Scalzi Arsenic and Old Lace is a farcical black comedy revolving around Mortimer Brewster, a marriage-hating drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and local police in Brooklyn, NY, as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves. His family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide; a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home (which then serve as graves for the aunts’ victims); and a murderous brother who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, to conceal his identity and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff. Joseph Kesselring wrote this black comedy in 1939. By turns sinister and hilarious, but mostly hilarious, this classic show has been an audience favorite since its January 1941 Broadway premiere. Frank Capra’s 1944 film adaptation, with Cary Grant as Mortimer and Peter Lorre as Dr. Einstein, cemented the show’s popularity for succeeding generations. The show has unforgettable characters (Dr. Einstein, Jonathan the cold-blooded killer, the crazy Teddy who thinks he’s Roosevelt digging the Panama Canal in the basement), delightful sight gags (bodies in the window seat), and inside jokes (a theater critic who plans to write his review in the cab on the way to the show; and who is forced to listen, bound and gagged, while his rescuer delays the rescue to tell him the plot of a play he has written), not to mention serial murders. All performances at the Baer Theatre at the Morgan Park Academy, 2153 West 111th Street in Chicago PLEASE NOTE OUR NEW LOCATION We are no longer performing at the Beverly Arts Center -- We are back to our previous stage at the The Baer Theatre of the Morgan Park Academy (a couple of blocks due East of the Beverly Arts Center.) Production Dates: Tickets: Friday, January 29, 2010 8:00 p.m. Saturday, January 30, 2010 8:00 p.m., Sunday, January 31, 2010 2:00 p.m. Price: $18 in advance, $20 at the door Phone: 773-BTG-TIXS (773-284-8497)