The Brewster family is insane. The aunts kill old men with poisoned wine, the uncles perform plastic surgery on ex-criminals and only one person in the family realizes that all of it is wrong.
This is the plot of Company Carolina’s “Arsenic and Old Lace,” a dark comedy by Joseph Kesselring, opening tonight. The play follows a family after the aunts, Martha and Abby, decide they’re going to start killing old, lonely men who stay at their lodge in order to put them out of their misery.
Director and senior dramatic art major Clare Shaffer saw a student production of the show while she was in Dublin, Ireland, studying abroad and said she was struck by the brilliance of the script.
“I thought it was very witty and when I read through it with the cast, our first read-through, literally, it took us three hours to get through it because we were laughing so hard every other line,” Shaffer said.
She said one of the ways she put her own touch on the show was by differentiating the old women. In most productions, she said the old women seem to blend together into one unit, but she wanted them to stand out individually.
“Going in, the primary mark I wanted to make was just to differentiate them and make them humorous in very different ways,” she said. “I think we’ve achieved something that most productions didn’t. They’re more than just sweet old ladies, they’re a little sassy too.”
Shaffer and the cast both said they’re also proud of the voice work in the show and that each character has a distinct character voice that is different from the performer’s normal speaking voice.
Izzy Francke, a senior dramatic art major who portrays Martha Brewster, said the old woman’s voice was just one fun part of the overall role. Francke describes Martha as very cute and old.
“They’re very religious, so they think this is their godly service to the world,” Francke said.
