Just a pinch of "Arsenic"

Okay, so I booked 2 shows to usher for the weekend. The previously mentioned second dose of Arsenic and Old Lace and Romeo & Juliet at the Opera. I’ll start with R & J. First of all, yawn. And then . . . no actually, yawn will pretty much cover it. Three and a half hours, people! I nearly sprained a muscle with that much yawning. I coulda been catching flies.

On to AOL. As I suspected, things were much more shipshape on Friday. Nearly all the little rough patches were smoothed out. So what you were left with was like one of those little old-fashioned tin clockwork toys where individual bits whir and spin in (near) perfect timing, each charming in their own right and pretty much fascinating when moving in concert. Old-fashioned seems to be the right word altogether. Most of the performances could have been plucked right out of a 40s movie. It was refreshingly un-ironic, in a way that most theater companies seem to think of themselves as too much of the cool kids to do anymore.

To start with, the set is like a giant dollhouse, where you are looking at the exterior of this Victorian two-story, complete with gingerbread and slate shingles. And then it spins to the inside of the Brewster home. Enough tzotchkes to make a Jewish nana swoon. Stairs, hidden doors, the window seat (with dead bodies). Then the costumes were all spot-on. My guess would be that they were nearly all done for the show, or tailored for the actor. There was one of the cops who had an astonishing bubble butt that was very nearly disguised by a cleverly cut jacket and pair of pants. The Brewster sisters’ funeral outfits were simply gasp worthy. Jet beading. Lace. Devoré. Sigh. Modern clothing is such a bore.

Betty Buckley and Tovah Feldshuh as the sisters were just a scream. Sweetly tolerant of their nephews’ eccentricities – one thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt, one has a sadly déclassé connection with the tawdry theater (tut tut), and one looks like Boris Karloff and likes to torture small animals, including his brother. They bear up admirably, and manage to still keep their little hobbies like donating toys to the needing, delivering beef broth to the sickly, and knocking off lonely, little old men, in the most benevolent manner possible, of course. These gals are dotty like a fox. And it’s kind of nice to see a pair of actresses having a great time just going balls to the wall with the crazy old aunt thing.

The one person I really had concerns about going in was the guy playing Mortimer. The movie version was one of the roles that Cary Grant was known for. And this guy is no Cary Grant. Who is? (Okay, maybe George Clooney on a good day. But that’s about it. And he doesn’t play Dallas all that often.) And, unfortunately, the person who takes up one of those iconic roles usually ends up standing in that giant Cary Grant shaped hole, trying to take up as much space as possible. What actually happened this time was that the actor rather pleasantly reminded me more of Jimmy Stewart (shout out to Philadelphia Story!). Totally worked.

Overall, the whole show is a kick in the pants. Top drawer. And if they got that spider picture shimmed on the second story landing so that it didn’t glare, I’d have been tempted to give it an A+. But points off for making me squint. Solid A, nonetheless.