Episode Details

There are some plays that radio has to reinvent.

And there are others that seem almost to have been waiting for radio all along.

Arsenic and Old Lace is one of those.

A quiet house in Brooklyn.

Two charming elderly sisters.

A nephew who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt.

Another nephew who is a theatre critic.

And, somewhere in the house, a body.

Actually, quite a few bodies.

Tonight on the Saturday Night Theatre Companion, we return to Joseph Kesselring’s wonderfully improbable world of murder, manners, madness—and elderberry wine.

And this time, we have an unusual opportunity.

Because on Chesterton Radio we can hear Arsenic and Old Lace three different ways.

There is the BBC Saturday Night Theatre production.

There is the 1952 American production from Best Plays of the New York Stage, featuring Boris Karloff.

And there is an earlier, much shorter Screen Guild Theatre adaptation with Boris Karloff and Eddie Albert.

Three productions.

Three different amounts of time.

Three different approaches to exactly the same problem:

How do you put one of Broadway’s great visual farces on the radio?

And perhaps the surprising answer is—

very easily.

This Deep Dive includes Spoilers. We invite you to listen to the three original productions then return for our discussion.

Arsenic and Old Lace - Boris Karloff - Best Plays of the New York Stage

Arsenic and Old Lace - Joseph Kesselring - BBC Saturday Night Theatre

Arsenic & Old Lace - Boris Karloff & Eddie Albert - Screen Guild Theatre

A PERFECTLY RESPECTABLE HOUSE

The great joke of Arsenic and Old Lace begins before anybody says anything funny.

Everything looks respectable.

The Brewster house is the sort of place where one expects tea, lace curtains, polished furniture and good manners.

Abby and Martha Brewster are precisely the sort of women one would trust.

They are kind.

They are generous.

They are concerned about their neighbors.

They attend church.

They help people in need.

And they murder lonely old men.

Not angrily.

Not for money.

Not even, in their minds, maliciously.

They regard it almost as a charitable service.

A lonely gentleman comes to the door.

He is welcomed inside.

Conversation follows.

And eventually he is offered a glass of elderberry wine.

Unfortunately, the recipe has been improved.

Arsenic.

Strychnine.

And just a little cyanide.

The joke works because Abby and Martha never become villains.

Everyone else understands that they are murderers.

They understand themselves to be helpful ladies.

And Joseph Kesselring never allows those two realities to meet.

That is the engine that drives the play.

ENTER MORTIMER BREWSTER

Into this peaceful domestic arrangement comes Mortimer Brewster.

Mortimer is a drama critic.

That is important.

Kesselring has placed a professional observer of theatrical absurdity inside a situation considerably more absurd than anything he could possibly review.

Mortimer thinks he understands bad plays.

Then he goes home.

His brother Teddy believes himself to be Theodore Roosevelt.

He charges up the stairs as though they were San Juan Hill.

He is digging the Panama Canal in the cellar.

And when Abby and Martha need somewhere to put their latest deceased gentleman, Teddy is quite willing to bury another victim of yellow fever in the Canal Zone.

Mortimer gradually discovers all of this.

And the comedy becomes increasingly frantic because Mortimer is apparently the only sane person in the house.

Or at least he thinks he is.

That distinction becomes increasingly impor