Arsenic and Old Lace

City Center kicks off its new “Voices! of the American Theater” series with a staged reading of Arsenic and Old Lace, a comedy by Joseph Kesselring. Abby and Martha Brewster take in boarders–usually men with nowhere to go, just waiting out their time. They don’t have to wait long because the good sisters feel sorry for the men; they feed them arsenic and bury them in the basement. Their boarders include a nephew who thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt; Jonathon Brewster who, in order to escape from the law, has had plastic surgery to look just like Frankenstein; and Mortimer, the theater critic, who finds out the aunts’ sinister secret. The cast includes Alec Baldwin, Celeste Holm, Terrence Mann, Lee Wilkof, and Joanne Woodward.

The “Voices!” series is devoted to rarely-revived great American plays of the past one hundred years, and is the brainchild of actor Alec Baldwin in response to City Center’s “Encores” series spotlighting great American musicals.