Dear Editor,
Every good comedy has an undercurrent of seriousness, and that’s certainly true of Arsenic and Old Lace, with its sort of reminder that we are all a little different—sometimes a lot different—from what we seem to be, like just about every single character in this play.
But in Arsenic and Old Lace, laughter trumps (trumps? oh no, forget I ever said the word); I mean the play is as remote from anything ponder…ous as white is from black. Everything and everyone in the play is lots of fun, from Roosevelt to the bumbling cops, to the love-struck Mortimer and his Boris Karloff-seeming sibling, to—and certainly not least—the fiendishly angelic Brewster aunts.
Go out and see the play if you haven’t already done so. You’ll come out laughing. Guaranteed!
Ermes Culos
Ashcroft