"Italian Insider"
February 10, 2012

Theatre: The Savoyards present Arsenic and Old Lace

By SOPHIE INGE

ROME -- On paper, the plot of Arsenic and Old Lace is sinister enough to rival some of the most horrific crime stories the world has ever seen: two homicidal maniacs who get their kicks from poisoning lonely homeless men and getting their deranged brother to bury their corpses in the cellar. Add a stage, two spinsters, some homemade elderberry wine, some arsenic and "just a pinch" of cyanide, and it is sheer comic brilliance.

 It was with some shock that the curtain was raised to reveal a civilised drawing room scene emanating bourgeois cosiness. Sisters Abby and Martha Brewster – played by hilarious comic duo Shelagh Stuchbery and Gabriella Spadaro - are busy fussing over their guests with tea cups and pots of broth, their Edwardian-style skirts flapping as they talk church sermons and biscuits. The men - including a reverend and two police officers - are sedate and uniformed, pillars of a fully-functioning western society.

 The first hint of controversy is, quite literally, a storm in a teacup: “What must you think of us clearing away the tea things at this time!” The party is joined by the Brewsters’ mad brother Teddy, played by Mike Gilmartin with perfectly timed comic outbursts, who is convinced that he is President Roosevelt. However, Abby and Martha seem more concerned about the plight of their nephew, Mortimer, a critic for The New York Times and his unorthodox involvement with the theatre.

 Mortimer is to review a murder mystery on stage that very evening, for him a matter of tedious routine. As luck would have it, murder arrives on his own doorstep when he discovers a corpse in the window seat of the drawing room, baffling his critical superiority. We soon discover that these tea-cup wielding spinsters are not to be underestimated. As it turns out, they are homicidal maniacs, but so blissfully unaware of the fact that it becomes farcical. And the absurdity does not stop there, with the arrival of another homicidal relative, Jonathan, sinisterly portrayed by Michael Fitzpatrick, and his side-kick, a face surgeon called Dr Einstein, played by Jim McManus with an impressive German accent.

 Despite the tragic element of the play, it is offset by the beautifully acted nonchalance and frankness of Abby and Martha Brewster. With the air of forgetful old ladies counting the stitches on their knitting needles, they are more preoccupied with technicalities than ethics “Was it 12 gentlemen that we killed? Or 11?” They may be serial killers, but, heaven forbid that they should tell a “fib!”

 As well as avoiding the tragic route, the play is saved from descending into complete Ionesco-style absurdity by Mortimer, played by Jacob Holder, who moves agilely from a haughty, controversial figure to the only voice of reason in the midst of homicidal chaos. Even the policemen whose job it is to restore order seem to be on another planet, all of them completely taken in by the seemingly righteous Brewster sisters who turn out to be the most deranged of them all.    

 Sandra Provost’s compelling interpretation of Kesselring’s farce is a perfect balance of the deadliness of arsenic and the frivolity of lace and strongly recommended to any English-speaking Rome-dwellers.