Arsenic and Old Lace

Ben and the cast from the Drama class at the high school presented Arsenic and Old Lace to the public this evening.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Ben was playing the role of Jonathan in the play.  If you’ve never heard of it (Ben hadn’t; luckily we were able to quickly remedy that oversight), Arsenic and Old Lace is a black comedy centered on the Brewster family who have lived in Brooklyn, New York for generations.  Insanity has been a part of the Brewster clan since they came to America on the Mayflower (“Insanity doesn’t run in my family; it practically gallops.”).  As the story begins, we meet the two spinster Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha, and their brother Teddy and it quickly becomes apparent that the family trait is personified in Teddy, who fancies himself to be Teddy Roosevelt.  He treats every visitor to the Brewster home as a member of Roosevelt’s presidency.  When he needs to go to the second floor of the house, he pounds up the stairs yelling “Charge!” as if taking San Juan Hill.  Also, he “travels to Panama” by going downstairs where he digs the Panama Canal in the cellar.  Looks, however, can be deceiving.

As the story continues, we learn that Abby and Martha have a few … eccentricities of their own.  One of the sisters’ latest “charities” is to lure lonely old men with no families into their home through boarding house advertisements and kill them with homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and “just a pinch” of cyanide.  In fact, Abby has just dispatched with their 12th victim, Mr. Hoskins, before the action of the play begins, but had to stuff his body in the window seat because company was coming.  With this revelation, now the only sane Brewster now appears to be the youngest brother, Mortimer.  After accidentally looking in the window seat and finding his aunt’s latest victim, however, Mortimer may be in danger of insanity as his life takes an unexpected side-ways turn.  At first, he thinks Teddy is the perpetrator of Mr. Hoskins untimely death.  When he learns it is actually Aunt Abby and Martha who are to blame, he goes into overdrive trying to figure out what to do with them.

As if all of these revelations aren’t bad enough, the return of the murderous middle brother, Jonathan, a criminal with a short temper who has been on the run from the law, sends Mortimer’s life into orbit.  Jonathan arrives in the house with his associate, Dr. Einstein, a plastic surgeon who operates on his face to keep him from capture by law enforcement.  Only, Dr. Einstein is an alcoholic and the last time he operated on Jonathan was after seeing the movie Frankenstein.  The movie affected him so badly that he shaped Jonathan’s new face to look like Boris Karloff (Karloff actually played the role of Jonathan in the original Broadway run of the play, but was not able to reprise the role in the movie).  Jonathan’s arrival with Dr. Einstein and a dead body of their own, Mr. Spenalzo, turns everything on its head.

I was really happy with Ben’s performance.  I thought he did a very good job.  Almost from the moment the play was announced by the drama teacher, Ben took a shining toward the character of Jonathan.  He seemed to like the idea of playing the villain character and it seemed no one else was interesting in reading for it.  Ben still needed to try out for the part just to get the experience, but the teacher basically told him the role was his if he really wanted it.  When he told us about the play and what character he wanted to try out for, I thought it was cool because this is one of my favorite classic movie comedies.  I tried to explain it, but don’t think I did very well.  Luckily, not long afterward, the movie came on Turner Classic Movies and I was able to show him the performances rather than struggle to tell what I liked about them.  Raymund Massey plays Jonathan in the movie with a certain monotone menace and I think Ben picked up on that and used it well.

Being our resident actress, Jennifer was very excited about Ben’s foray into thespianism.  She helped Ben with his lines and gave him acting tips.  He worked hard to memorize his lines.  That was one thing I noticed during the performance.  Ben struck me as being one of the best prepared actors as far as memorization of lines.  According to him, he messed up on one line.  I noticed, but also saw how he was able to recover and continue with a small amount of offstage coaxing.  There were times when others in the cast would stop and stare as they searched for the next line; most of the time they were able to continue when someone whispered from offstage.  Being that this was the first play put on by the high school in 7 years, I think the cast did a good job.  The flubbed lines and missed cues slowed the momentum of some scenes or the rapid fire nature of the back and forth between certain characters, but, as a whole, these things could be forgiven.  Considering this was most, if not all, of these kids first time acting on stage, I thought they handled it well.

Even though he needed to use his cane, he included it well as a prop and I didn’t find it distracting.  I also thought he also was able to pull off the menace of Jonathan.  He had good interaction with Ryan Thomas, who played Mortimer.  There was one moment when they did a “stare down” with each other where they were practically touching foreheads that made the whole audience laugh.  The other thing that amazed me about Ben’s performance was his physical range of motion.  I know I’ve said it before in other posts, but to see him move the way he’s moving now is such an amazing blessing.  At one point in the play, Jonathan and Dr. Einstein have placed Mr. Spenalzo in the window seat, but Mortimer thinks Mr. Hoskins is still there.  Both characters make a mad dash to sit on the window seat when it looks like someone is going to open it.  Ben and Ryan were on the opposite side of the stage when the “dash” began.  Ben not only kept up with Ryan, he did so with movement that I used to see from him.  That was very cool.  There were a couple of other scenes where Ben needed to be physical and he pulled it off seemingly without trouble.  Those scenes were very special to me because of what they meant and the work that had gone into making them a reality. J

The final interesting aspect of the performance for me was the fact that the gender make-up of the drama class led to changes in the genders of a couple of roles.  The biggest change was with Dr. Einstein.  He became a she (Herman to Henrietta, I believe) as the role was given to Alana Shutter.  Even though I always think of Peter Lorre when it comes to this part, Alana did a very good job of making the character her own.  Both she and Ben seemed to know their lines well and were able to keep the momentum of their scenes moving as they played off each other.  I think Ben really enjoyed being a part of the production, but, as he said in the car as we drove home, he is glad it is over.  According to him, next up is some comedy sketches like Saturday Night Live or Studio C.  I’m wondering if the students will be asked to come up with their own skits or if they will play off work that has already been done.  Ben isn’t sure, so we shall see. J