from Staff reports
Theatre at Southeastern will present its dinner theatre production, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Nov. 17-19 at 6:30 p.m. in the Visual and Performing Arts Center.
“‘Arsenic and Old Lace,’ a 1939 comedy thriller by Joseph Kesselring, revolves around Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who must deal with his crazy, homicidal family and local police in Brooklyn, NY,” said the show’s director Dr. Aaron Adair. “At the same time he, like so many of us, must decide whether to go through with his recent promise to marry the woman he loves and subject her to his loony family.”
The family includes two spinster aunts who have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made wine laced with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch” of cyanide; a brother who believes he is Teddy Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home (which then serve as graves for the aunts’ victims); and a murderous brother who has received plastic surgery performed by an alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein, to conceal his identity and now looks like a horror-film actor.
The cast features sophomore Dustin Curry as Mortimer Brewster, sophomore Jordan Hammack as Abby Brewster, freshman Minda Rocha as Martha Brewster, senior Boomer Lowrie as Jonathan Brewster, senior Aaron Rains as Dr. Einstein and junior Brent Odell as Teddy Brewster.
Additional cast members include senior Brianne Cothran, senior Rowdy Peacock, freshman Riley Collard, junior Megan Mackey, sophomore Tanner Risner and sophomore Domanick Hubbard.
Tickets for “Arsenic and Old Lace” are $30 to the general public and $25 to students and seniors. Reservations are required for this production. For more information, go online to www.se.edu/theatre or call the VPAC Box Office at 745-2696.