ARSENIC AND OLD LACE: Kesselring, Derby Playhouse till 17 September.
Derby
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
by Joseph Kesselring.
Derby Playhouse To 17 September 2005.
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & 3,10 Sept 2.30pm.
Audio-Described 10 Sept 2.30pm, 14 Sept 7.30pm.
BSL Signed 10 Sept 2.30pm, 15 Sept.
Backchat 15Sept.
Runs: 2h 45m One interval.
TICKETS: 01332 363275.
www.derbyplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Alan Geary: 25 August 2005.
A glorious black farce of a thriller; connoisseurs of the one-liner go equipped with a note-pad.
The jobbing connoisseur of the one-liner should go to this production equipped with a thick note-pad. But it's a well-written play in the sense that the one-liners aren't there just for decoration: they move the plot along or tell us something about character or situation we'll need to know later.
In a wonderfully black farce of a thriller Kesselring gives us verbal wit and a generous parade of well-differentiated grotesques - "Insanity runs in my family. It practically gallops," says Mortimer. He pokes fun at the neighbourly incompetence of the local police - Irish of course, to a man - and takes a less than gentle dig at Broadway and er theatre critics - a brave thing to do given that the play was premiered on Broadway in 1941.
Director Joseph Alford uses this production to send up Capra's classic 1944 film. Even if you haven't seen that film you'd know that the hilariously sinister Dr Einstein [Herman not Albert] must have been played by Peter Lorre. But Lucien Mc Dougall doesn't simply strive after an impression of Lorre in the same part: he does homage to him.
Similarly, Oliver Senton, brilliant as Mortimer, is not trying to copy Cary Grant; he exaggerates him so gloriously you'd swear he has a cleft in his chin when he hasn't. As he strides, frantically gesticulating, round the stage his ludicrously check jacket seems too small for him even if it actually isn't.
Incongruity of scale applies to furniture as well as jackets. At the outset the open-plan set seems huge; but as soon as the actors come on the entire cast remains on stage for the whole play we realise that tables, chairs, and so on, are under-sized. Actors look as if they're all legs as they sprawl on the furniture like adults in a nursery classroom. Precisely what profound point, if any, is being made here isn't clear; it doesn't need to be because it's very funny.
In fact, some of the best laughs of the evening are to be had from the physical convolutions of the up-and-down Brooklyn mansion.
One image lingers: Jonathan (the superb Dominic Burdess), an un-willing Karloff look-alike complete with crab-like gait and immobile face caused by Einstein's latest, and badly botched, plastic surgery job, half turns to Einstein and says: Remember Doctor, you're operating tomorrow, and this time you'd better be sober!'
Elaine: Lindsay Allen.
Abby Brewster: Helen Blatch.
Jonathan: Dominic Burdess.
Harper/Gibbs/Brophy/Witherspoon: Tim Charrington.
Teddy: Tom Godwin.
Einstein: Lucien MacDougall.
Martha Brewster: Geraldine Newman.
O'Hara/Lieutenant Rooney: George Potts.
Mortimer: Oliver Senton.
Director: Joseph Alford.
Designer: Diego Pitarch.
Lighting: Natasha Chivers.
Sound: Caroline Downing.
2005-08-30 10:45:15