Arts Listings

An old Brooklyn mansion, stuffed with memories—and more than memories—of an eccentric, even grisly past, presently populated by two smiling old spinsters who only want to help lonely men find peace; one nephew, a gangster, who barges in with his drunken plastic surgeon, Dr. Einstein; a chorus line of Irish cops; and the other nephew, in love with the minister’s daughter next door, himself the grisliest thing of all—a drama critic. 

(Oh yes, and that corpse—whichever one it is at the moment—in the window seat.) 

Such is the cheerfully frenetic unreality of life on a quiet street across the river from the New York of yore, in that still hilarious send-up of respectability colliding with the further reaches of genteel insanity—and a lot of craziness not quite so genteel—Arsenic and Old Lace, now onstage in a delightful rendition at the Masquers Playhouse in Point Richmond. 

Betsy Bell Ringer has conducted her cast through the casually farcical uproar that’s predicated by the maiden sisters Brewster plying their would-be gentlemen boarders with a tainted glass of elderberry wine. There’s a unanimity of purpose here, which is probably the only way this old burlesque of so many long-forgotten conventions of the stage—and of society—can be brought off. 

And they succeed quite handsomely: Martha Luehrman and Theo R. Collins as the brightly poisonous sisters, David Bintinger as their thug nephew (who flies into a murderous rage when anyone identifies his much-lifted face as like Boris Karloff’s), C. Conrad Cady as the shyly tippling Dr. Einstein, Michael O’Brien charging up the stairs as if San Juan Hill in his sanguine delusion of being Teddy Roosevelt ... these and their fellows in an ensemble of 14 have the right idea: play it upbeat and straight, and the laughs will follow. 

Only Dan Garfinkle as critic Mortimer and Steph Peek as minister’s daughter Elaine, ingenues equally incorrigible as the crazies they’re surrounded with, have a sometimes rough go of it—though Dan Garfinkle manages to get into the swim, while Steph Peek seems caught in another time zone at moments. The comic lovers are a fragile convention; it’s difficult to make them seem true to type when that type’s been covered over and supplanted so many times in the past seven decades or so. 

The closest relatives, in the conventional sense (of humor), which we have to the denizens of the Brewster manse would probably be Edward Gorey’s deft, mock-melancholic procession of tintypes, or the late Charles Addams’ hoary cartoons (not the eponymous “Family").  

As is so often the case with Masquers’ shows, the parlor decor and tea set (Rob Bradshaw’s) and Loralee Windsor’s exceptional costuming give the production just the right, slightly stagy, comfortable touch to ease the audience into the charming hysteria of these characters out of a family so famously mad, that the most triumphant note struck is a cry of discovery: “I’m a bastard!”  

ARSENIC AND OLD LACE 

Presented by Masquer’s Playhouse at 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays through Feb. 24. $15. 

105 Park Playhouse, Point Richmond.  

232-4031.