Review Roundup: ARSENIC AND OLD LACE in Dallas

Tovah Feldshuh and Betty Buckly are currently starring in Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring at the Kalita Humphreys Theater at the Dallas Theater Center. Directed by Scott Schwartz, the production began performances on February 4, 2011 and runs through March 13, 2011.

First produced on Broadway in 1941 and as a Hollywood film in 1944, Arsenic and Old Lace is one of the funniest and most often performed plays of the American theater. This farcical black comedy revolves around two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch" of cyanide; their brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of their home (which then serve as graves for the aunts' victims); and their other brother, a murderer who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein, to conceal his identity and now looks like the famous horror film actor, Boris Karloff.

Legendary Broadway actors Betty Buckley and Tovah Feldshuh join forces to create a fresh, new production of this hilarious comedy.

For more information, visit the Dallas Theater Center online.

Mark Lowry, DFW.com "Broadway stars Betty Buckley and Tovah Feldshuh play the murderous Brewster sisters, who poison men with their elderberry wine and hide the bodies in their cellar or, in one case, the window seat. That's how their nephew, drama critic Mortimer (Dallas actor Lee Trull, who displays mad physical comedy skills and is more dashing than he's ever been onstage), discovers what his aunties are doing... Under the direction of New York wonderboy Scott Schwartz, the production plays up the madcap. Actors walk into or over, or jump over, furniture on Anna Louizos's detailed set. Buckley gets to show off her voice with a downstage center hymn (it's a showstopper), and Feldshuh is wiry, nimble and hilarious as the sister in control. It all makes for a delicious cocktail that you'll be eager to drink up."

Lawson Taitte, The Dallas Morning News "The Dallas Theater Center hired two big Broadway stars forArsenic and Old Lace. What you see on stage, though, is a whole shining galaxy."

 

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