Arsenic and Old Lace

On Saturday I went to Morton High School’s fall play Arsenic and Old Lace. I went because my brother was in it, but also because I was in theater all through high school and had promised friends that were in it that I would go see it.

Arsenic and Old Lace is a comedy about the Brewster Family. Mortimer Brewster and his brothers, Jonathan and Teddy, were raised by their aunts, Abby and Martha, and the play begins when Mortimer proposes to his girlfriend, who is Abby and Martha’s neighbor and a pastor’s daughter, Elaine Harper. Shortly after, while looking for a book, Mortimer discovers a body in the window seat. His aunts confess to poisoning him and tell Mortimer that he is there until Teddy can bury him in the cellar.

You see, Teddy thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, the 26th president of the United States. To him, the cellar is Panama and he is digging the Panama canal.

Abby then tells Mortimer that it started with an old, homeless man looking for a room to sleep and dying in their living room five minutes later. Teddy then buried him in the cellar after being told that he was a yellow fever victim.

While Mortimer tries to process everything, his aunts confess to poisoning ten other men, who were also buried in the cellar by Teddy due to “yellow fever.” So when Mortimer has to leave to write a review for a play, he tells his aunts not to let anyone else into the house. They promise, only to find that Jonathan, who had left home years ago and hasn’t been heard from, has come home. He brings with him Dr. Helga Einstein, who has done plastic surgery on Jonathan many times and is the reason for his disfiguration at the time, and Mr. Spenalzo, who Jonathan killed.

Later in the night, Jonathan and Helga decide to stay the night after Teddy brings Helga into the cellar, thinking that she is a general. Helga finds the hole that has been made for Mr. Hoskins, the man Abby and Martha poisoned but is still in the window seat, and tells Jonathan that they should put Mr. Spenalzo in the hole.

So after everyone is in bed, Teddy takes Mr. Hoskins down to the cellar and shortly after Jonathan and Helga bring Mr. Spenalzo into the house through the window. When Elaine Harper knocks at the door, Helga puts the body in the window seat and hides when Elaine comes in. Jonathan then sneaks around to the front door and follows Elaine in, who came to see Abby and Martha thinking that someone was trying to break into the house. She actually saw Jonathan and Helga, but she didn’t know that. So Jonathan thinks she’s lying and gags her and makes Helga take her to the cellar. The noise wakes Martha and Abby up, who are dress all in black and had planned on having a funeral for Mr. Hoskins in the cellar.

Mortimer then comes home from the play just as Elaine comes running from the cellar. Mortimer sends her home after realizing who Jonathan is and tells him to leave. After hearing that Martha and Abby said they could stay, Mortimer makes Jonathan and Helga sleep in the living room, but changes his mind when Helga says she’ll sleep on the window seat. Mortimer still thinks that Mr. Hoskins is still in the seat and learns minutes later, after looking in the seat, that someone else is in there. He gets mad at his aunts for letting someone into the house and shows Abby Mr. Spenalzo, who she refuses to bury in the basement because he’s a foreigner. When they try to show him to Martha, Jonathan yells, “NO!” and Mortimer becomes very happy. He tries to use the dead body to get Jonathan out of the house, saying that he’ll call the cops. But Jonathan threatens to tell the cops about the other body they found in the basement, so Jonathan and Helga stay.

Martha and Abby then later tell Jonathan and Helga about the twelve bodies in the cellar and we learn that Jonathan has also killed twelve men. Jonathan then plans to kill Mortimer, who is tied up by Helga and Jonathan and almost drinks the wine Abby and Martha use to poison their victims. They are then interrupted by Teddy, who blows his bugle, and then by Officer O’Hara, who comes looking for Mortimer to talk about the play she’s writing.

O’Hara spends many hours talking about the plot and is joined later by Officer Brophy and Officer Klein, who were called because Teddy blew his bugle again. They find Jonathan asleep on the couch and when he wakes up, he thinks he was turned in by Mortimer so he tells them about the thirteen bodies in the cellar. They don’t believe him and tell him he’s insane.

In the end, Teddy is put into a home for the insane and Martha and Abby go with him, leaving the house to Mortimer. We also find out that Jonathan had escaped from a prison in Indiana and was wanted. But Martha and Abby are not happy to have poisoned the same number of people that Jonathan had killed, so they poison the old man who came from the home Teddy was going to.