By Arlene McKanic
“Practically gallops,” he says.More, the Brewsters are burdened with different types of insanity. There's the genteel, fluttery sort practiced by Mortimer's saintly aunts, Abby and Martha, the thuggish kind practiced by his long-lost brother Jonathan and the harmless kind epitomized by his brother Teddy. Poor Teddy thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt and is happily digging the Panama Canal in his aunts' basement, something the two dear old ladies find very convenient.Abby and Martha are into charity work, you see, and one of their charities is easing the way to the afterlife for lonely old men, thanks to a concoction of elderberry wine, arsenic, strychnine and cyanide. They then bury the corpses in the basement, with the proper funeral services, of course.Their nephew Jonathan, who returns after an absence of some years, kills people for the hell of it. He's on the lam with a drunken sot of a doctor who now and then rearranges his face so he won't be recognized too easily. The problem is the doctor's work is so shoddy that Jonathan's visage has become unforgettable, and not in a pleasing way. In the meantime Teddy digs his canal and blows his trumpet, and Mortimer tries, frantically, to hold everything together.The great pleasure of this production is in the performances, which are spot on. Karla Osuna and Genevieve O'Hare are hilarious and alarming as Abby and Martha, respectively. If their loopiness, Victorian fussiness, utter cluelessness and, of course, their “potion” didn't inspire the Baldwin sisters of the TV show “The Waltons,” I don't know what did. O'Hare's Martha seems the more stolid of the two; one gets the impression that she enjoys her Christian duty of dispatching the poor old codgers rather more than her sister. Rene Bendana, dressed in black and sporting Robert de Niro's Frankenstein boots as well as his facial sutures, injects a note of real menace and psychopathic fury as Jonathan, while Richard Weyhausen is a scream as the hapless, ever-inebriated and ironically named plastic surgeon Dr. Einstein.Nick DeCesare is strangely moving as Teddy – he really does think he's President Roosevelt and that the corpses his aunts want him to inter are victims of Yellow Fever. Amanda Doria, so good as Nellie Forbush in Beari's production of “South Pacific,” makes an intelligent and irrepressible Elaine, Mortimer's put-upon fiancee. Vincent is brilliant as Mortimer, the Brewster family's only sane member. (We find out just why near the end of the play). The audience is prepared not to like him at first – he's smug, a bit dismissive of Elaine and a little cynical; he's a theater critic who hates the theater. But when he finds out what his aunts are up to, his love for them brings out his manic protectiveness. They're too old, too innocent, too dopey to spend the rest of their lives in the slammer!The cast is rounded out by director Jay Longan as Elaine's clergyman father Dr. Harper as well as Jim Thomas, Ian McDonald, Jonathan Applebaum and Nick Becce as policemen who are so friendly with the Brewster sisters that they, thankfully, refuse to believe any talk of buried bodies. Fred J. Kaminski is excellent as both the head of a rest home and a gentle sap who Mortimer saves from his aunts' wine in the nick of time. Praise should also go to Longan's confident direction, Jimmy O'Neill's lighting design and Amie Backner's costumes; the clothes the Brewster sisters wear, replete with shawls and cameos, are delicious. Appreciation should also be given to all the folks who helped design the set (Neat Productions and Eric Neilssen, John Baratta, Pauline Baratta, Rene Bendana, Vince Civello, Ian McDonald and Jimmy O'Neill), which is a cozy hodgepodge of cushy armchairs, overstuffed sofas, a player piano, lots of chintz, Oriental rugs, vases of flowers, lace antimaccassars, and of course, that window seat.”Arsenic and Old Lace” is presented by a special arrangement with the Dramatists Play Service and is playing at the Trinity Lutheran Church. It remains as much nasty fun as ever.The play is on Feb. 16-18. For information call 718-736-1263.
