TH EATER
BY RICK LE V IN
SINISTER SPINSTER SISTERS
VLT revisits the black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace
W
hen Joseph Kesserling sat down to write
Arsenic and Old Lace — about a pair of
spinster sisters who act as angels of
mercy to lonely old pensioners, and the
nephew who struggles to put a cork in
his murderous aunties’ decanter of toxic
elderberry wine — the American playwright believed he
was cooking up a mean, disturbing drama about the banal-
ity of evil.
The play that hit the stage in 1931, however, had
twisted itself into a wicked knot of gallows humor, and
audiences loved it. By the time of Frank Capra’s 1944 film
adaptation, the die had been cast: For many, Arsenic and
Old Lace is the sine qua non of modern dark comedy,
equal parts nasty, bumptious and wry.
Very Little Theatre’s staging of A&OL, directed by
Sarah Etherton, is a faithful rendition of Kesserling’s most
beloved play, solidly composed if a bit unadventurous and
long-winded. After a few opening night snags in the way
of vocal volume and flubbed lines, the production relaxed
into a kind of loping familiarity, as though banking on the
elderly audience’s collective taste for nostalgia.
Because the action of the play takes place exclusively
in the boarding house of the devious Brewster sisters,
Abby and Martha (Chris Hugo and Jennifer Sellers,
respectively, both excellent), the atmospherics on stage are
important, and Michael Walker’s set design is carefully
construed to evoke the musty comforts of dowager living,
though sometimes the stage’s spacious furnishing works
against it; things aren’t sufficiently cluttered and
claustrophobic-feeling to create the mausoleum creepiness
that gives the play its zing.
That said, Etherton has done a top-notch casting job,
and the actors’ comic acumen elevates this A&OL above
mere sentimentality and camp. Along with Hugo and
Sellers — both of whom adeptly eke out the sinister/sweet
paradox that makes their characters’ murdering ways so
weirdly charming — there is Chris Hugo in the key role of
Mortimer; as the nephew who must quietly thwart his
aunts’ “bad habit,” Hugo finds a nice balance between
bemused bumbling and charismatic can-do.
Also noteworthy are the always-strong Michael P.
Watkins as the drunken Dr. Einstein, Christina Jamerson as
Elaine Harper and Michael Walker, whose baritone voice
and seedy leers turn the murderous Jonathan Brewster into
an icon of lurking comic malignancy.
But VLT, and most of the rest of Eugene’s dramatic
venues, continues to ignore a problem that eventually will
decimate what’s left of our local theater scene. The
problem is this: In their effort to maintain a faithful, paying
audience by regularly mounting safe, sure-fire productions
(a kind of “First, do no harm” approach), local theaters are
failing to renew their audience base. Now, I like old
people; I’m damn near AARP-worthy myself. But at
A&OL I would say the mean audience age was 70.
VLT, the longest standing community theater in the
country, is obviously doing a lot of things right, but it’s
not doing enough to get young people in the seats. Why
not mount some riskier stuff once in a while, like Adam
Rapp (the American playwright who wrote Red Light
Winter)? By not challenging audiences at the level of art,
Eugene theaters are underestimating the audiences they
now have, and ignoring all those untapped fans out there
who might thrill to see something written in the last, say,
30 years. ■
Arsenic and Old Lace plays through Oct. 27 at Very Little Theatre; $12-$17.
Get Your Tickets Now!!
BURRITOS
BOWLS
SEVEN SHOWS ONLY
October 26-November 10, 2012
Tickets available at
actorscabaret.org/tickets
Book by
Kevin Murphy &
Dan Studney
Music by Dan Studney
Lyrics by Kevin Murphy
Directed by Joe Zingo
Call 541- 683-4368
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October 18, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
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