Arsenic and Old Lace – 7/17/08

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As I left the performance of Arsenic and Old Lace at Naperville Central High School, one very elderly lady said to her companion, “Weren’t the performances superb?” And I wanted to bang my head on the wall. An Arsenic and Old Lace where the sharpest comic timing onstage belongs to the ingénue is a troubled production.

Arsenic and Old Lace concerns two elderly women who poison lonely old men and bury them in the cellar. Their nephew Mortimer, a drama critic, finds out about their hobby and desperately tries to (A) put a stop to it and (B) protect them while keeping his fiancée Elaine from finding out what’s going on. Complicating things are his brothers: Teddy, who firmly believes himself to be Teddy Roosevelt and Jonathan, a homicidal maniac who looks like Boris Karloff, thanks to his inebriated plastic surgeon/sidekick Dr. Einstein.

I have seen Lisa Barber (Elaine) in a couple of shows. The state of women’s roles in community theatre being what it is, she is continually being wasted in ingénue roles when she should be getting Carol Burnett parts. The woman is funny and when it comes to timing, she has a clue. Will somebody please hand her Noises Off and get it over with? Put her in a farce part with some teeth in it – she’ll tear the place apart. She has the best comic timing in this production.

The aunts are played by Deanna Norman (Aunt Abby) and Marianne Bowles (Aunt Martha). They take some getting used to because they have been told to speak in annoying “old lady voices”. But both women are very talented and, especially when playing off of each other, they’re pretty funny. They have a good chemistry together. Bowles in particular gets a wonderful gleam in her eye at the thought of poisoning a guest.

Officer O’Hara (George McArdle) is funny and very energetic. He should have had a larger role. As one of the nephews.

Jonathan (James Turano) is problematic. Jonathan’s menace is quiet and extremely scary. He dominates by force of personality – he doesn’t get physical. It is (duh) a Boris Karloff part, not Edward G. Robinson. Turano, who gave a brilliant performance as Salieri in Amadeus a couple of years ago, plays the part like a pitbull locked in a pantry. Wearing a distracting fake limp and some of the worst makeup in theatrical history, he puts his friendly arms around the aunts, crunching them a bit, then knocks Aunt Abby out of his way when breaking the pose. Sorry, but that sucks. It’s too much. He’s a big guy – he doesn’t have to get physical with people. We know he’s dangerous.

Larry Lipskie as Dr. Einstein is pretty good. The actor playing Teddy is not. Teddy is written to be played over the top. This Teddy looks at the floor a lot.

Mortimer. Sigh. Mortimer is the engine that drives the play; and it’s a thankless job. He has to race through the show at top energy, hit every gag on the head and set up shots for the other team members. This Mortimer is (to put it delicately) delicate. He has no force of personality and no clue on how to deliver jokes. His comedic engine won’t go over 30 mph. Basic projection is a problem.

Bradley Bankemper, playing Lieutenant Rooney, is a pretty good actor, but nobody told him that he’s supposed to be an older cop in the early 1940s. The fringy red beard he wears (A) was not seen in that period except on Egyptian spies in Peter Lorre movies and (B) made him look like a hairy twelve year old.

Pet peeve: mispronounced slang. From one of the cops: “Look at that pus. He looks like Boris Karloff!” Not “pus.” “Puss.” Meaning “face”, not “thick bodily fluid”.

And we’re getting to the two most unfortunate aspects of the production. Scott Bishop’s direction showed no sense of pace whatsoever. His idea of pace is to have actors step on laughs to keep things moving. When saying exit lines, instead of being at the door and exiting as the line ends, actors are ten feet away, say the line, then the next actor has to wait while the first actor crosses and exits. Lines that are meant to be slam-dunked with window seat slams are completely mistimed.

• Bishop blocks people to stand or sit directly behind the person they are talking to, although they have miles of room onstage.
• The bit with Mr. Spinalzo’s shoe is dropped.
• When Teddy blows the bugle, Einstein and Jonathan don’t spill their drinks – so there’s no reason for them not to drink them later.
• Jonathan opens Einstein’s medical bag to show Mortimer how he’s going to be tortured. First thing out of the bag? A cat o’nine tails whip – the latest in medical equipment. Then a turkey baster; my, how horrifying. You’re supposed to be setting up real suspense at that point. Get a clue.
• This is typical pacing in this production:

JONATHAN: That’s easily taken care of. All I need is one more. Just one more.

(Door opens.)

(Mortimer saunters in.)

(Shuts door.)

(Slowly turns to the others.)

MORTIMER: Well, here I am!

(Lights out)

“Here I am” indeed. Jesus Christ. It’s the scene closer – get the timing right:

JONATHAN: (as Mortimer enters) Just one more.

MORTIMER: Well, here I am!

(Door shuts during the laugh. Lights out)

Last but least: the set designer is uncredited in the program, which was a smart move. Many theatres cannot afford elaborate sets and so you give them a break for ingenuity. Or a show doesn’t require a realistic set, so imagination is employed. Arsenic and Old Lace requires a dead-real Victorian house. And Summer Place can afford that. Instead, they built the ugliest, cheapest and all around worst set for a comedy I have seen in my three centuries of playgoing. The doors aren’t strong enough to slam or even knock on solidly. There is a railing leading up to the landing, but no railing around it. There are giant picture frames hanging all over the place with nothing in them. It doesn’t look expressionistic – it looks retarded. They are hanging by wires in the air, so every time a door closes, the frames are gone with the wind.

But worst of all are the stairs: giant stairs bisect the main playing area into two levels – always a wonderful idea when most of the show consists of people having to dash across the room, right? Or when two of the leads are older women in long dresses and heels? The stairs chop any cross-stage dashes in two. It is the dumbest fucking idea for a comedy since Rob Schneider was put on a payroll. Normally I try to give community theatres a break – but there are theatre companies that would give their corporate eye-teeth for the kind of facilities Summer Place has access to. Wasting them in this manner is criminal.

If you have to see this, see it for Lisa Barber, Marianne Bowles, Deanna Norman and George McArdle. If you have to.