WALES — Oak Hill High School’s Little Theatre in the Woods will present the comedy, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” by Joseph Kesselring, at 7 p.m. Friday and Saturday, Nov. 6 and 7, and 2 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 8.

The play, written in 1939, is a farcical black comedy revolving around the Brewster family, descended from the “Mayflower,” but now composed of insane homicidal maniacs, according to a new release from the school.

The hero, Mortimer Brewster (played by Nik Peterson), is a drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and local police in Brooklyn, New York, as he debates whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves, Elaine Harper (played by Angelique James).

His family includes two spinster aunts, Abby Brewster (Michaela Gervais) and Martha Brewster (Cassandra Lovell) 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; a brother, Teddy Brewster (Kyle Severance) who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home (which then serve as graves for the aunts’ victims; he thinks that they died of Yellow Fever); and a murderous brother, Jonathan Brewster (Hayden Rodrigue), who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein (Dylan Wing), to conceal his identity, and now looks like horror-film actor Boris Karloff, a self-referential joke, as the part was originally played on Broadway by Karloff.

Other cast members include Jared Chase, Sam Guilford, Collin Walker, Emma Curtis, Kaitlyn Lemay and Michaela Daigle.

The performance is directed by Lucy Rioux with assistance by Katelyn Cloutier. The technical team is heading by Laura Eldridge and includes Kasey Doyle, Linus Obenhaus, Rachael Howard, Miranda Kramer, Kristina Caron, Katie Daigle and James Greenwood, with costume assistance by Lyn Swan.

Donations will be accepted at the door. For more information, email lucyrioux@gmail.com.


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