"Arsenic And Old Lace" a farcical black comedy presented by Fish Hoek Dramatic Society, at the Masque Theatre

Picture: Gary Green and Nigel Stephenson

The macabre comedy Arsenic And Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring was first staged in 1941, and according to the opening night review in The New York Times, the play was “so funny that none of us will ever forget it”. It later moved to the Hudson Theatre in 1944 and closed there having played for 1,444 performances.

Arsenic and Old Lace runs at the Masque Theatre, Muizenberg, from Friday 03 May to Saturday 11 May, (excl. Sun to Wed). Week nights at 8pm; Sat. at 2:30 pm and 6:30 pm. Tickets are R55 for matinees and Thursday evening, and R65 all other nights.

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The play is a farcical black comedy, set in Brooklyn, New York, in the house of the eccentric Brewster family. Jonathon who has escaped from an asylum for the criminally insane, Teddy who thinks he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar, and Mortimer who is a drama critic and engaged to be married to Elaine.  Mortimer's family also includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine, laced with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch” of cyanide.

Mortimer’s world becomes a nightmare when he discovers a body in the window seat … and the plot thickens.

The large cast includes well-known faces such as Helen Mathers, Sandy Gee, Alastair Duff, John McConnell and Aubrey Hindle, Gary Green and Nigel Stephenson. Jane Philbrick directs for Fish Hoek Dramatic Society in this clever mixture of comedy and mayhem.

To book phone 021 788 1898 or email bookings@masquetheatre.co.za

Photography by Lynda Jennings