The Stage

Arsenic and Old Lace

Published Monday 2 November 2009 at 10:10 by Lesley Bates

Our first glimpse of the Brewster’s Brooklyn home is through a shroud of dark net.

This is, after all, a household where death is just a window box seat away, where graves are dug in cellars and poison lurks in elderberry wine. And it’s home to a family where madness, as Mortimer Brewster observes, doesn’t so much run as positively gallops.

Whether a production of Joseph Kesselring’s black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace moves at a similar pace - and it needs to - falls largely to the actor playing Mortimer.

Philip Wilson’s cracking production for Salisbury Playhouse is blessed with a first-rate Mortimer in Damien Matthews, who turns in an engaging, energetic performance with just the right blend of panic, wisecracks and well-timed double takes.

Wilson and Matthews keep the piece thundering along but they are not alone. The large cast all chip in handsomely, with some lovely cameos from Roger Alborough as a cigar-puffing Lt Rooney, Colm Gormley as stagestruck Officer O’Hara and James Clarkson as prissy Mr Witherspoon.

Gwyneth Powell excels as sweetly murderous Abby Brewster, outshining sister Martha (Margi Campi), whose accent wobbled badly on press night.

Stuart Fox’s Teddy, mad as a box of frogs, charging up the stairs of Mike Britton’s magnificent set and Christopher Ryan’s criminally insane Dr Einstein also stand out.

Jaimi Barbakoff makes a spirited Elaine Harper and David Leonard is menacingly Karloff-esque as Jonathan.

Richard Hammarton’s original music hits just the right note of film noir.

Old-fashioned fun like this is not everyone’s cup of poison, but with sold-out signs already up on several performances, getting hold of a ticket could be murder.

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