Joseph Kesselring
Arsenic and Old Lace
Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who hates theatre, pays a visit with his fiancée Elaine to his aunts Abby and Martha.
He discovers by coincidence that the two very good-natured and helpful ladies are in fact serial killers who, out of kindness and with the best of intentions, poison and kill lonely and unhappy elderly gentlemen.
Firmly convinced that they are doing a good job, they bury them in the cellar with the help of Mortimer’s mentally ill brother Teddy. Teddy imagines that he is President Roosevelt and believes he is burying victims of the yellow fever in Panama. Things get even more complicated when a third brother, Jonathan, turns up. He is a brutal killer and a dangerous psychopath. Recently, he has escaped from a sanatorium, along with the equally mad Doctor Einstein, a plastic surgeon who changes Jonathan’s face every year. Police officer O’Hara gets involved, but he’s much more interested in writing plays than solving murders...
Arsenic and Old Lace, 1939
Comedy
Premiere: 14. November 2023
Performance length is 1 hour and 55 minutes and has no pause.
Creators
Translator
Alenka Klabus Vesel
Director
Nina Ramšak Marković
The fresh production of this more than eighty years old text about the bizarre family Brewster will appeal to all lovers of black and eccentric humour.
The members of the bizarre New York family Brewster could be described as some sort of ancient ancestors of the Addams family. The text is surprisingly close to our contemporary world – the world of tabloid stories about serial killers, psychopaths, poisoners and people who change their faces with plastic operations …
Jospeh Kesselring, American playwright (1902 – 1967) became famous for his play Arsenic and Old Lace. The play was first and very successfully put on stage in Broadway in 1941. The 1944 film starring Cary Grant is also unforgettable.
Opening in April 2023 on the Small Stage