Joseph Kesserling's 80-plus-year-old plot boiler has a core to it that's instantly engrossing - two gentle sweet little old ladies who's principle hobby is mass-murder with their own special concoction of wine with a couple of doses of Arsenicc, strycnine and cyanide. Otherwise dedicated to the utmost proper behaviour (to the extent that they gasp at the possiblity of ever fibbing about their hobby), they're part of a charmingly eccentric milleau - the brother who thinks he's a former political figure, regualar visits from the reverend and his eager-to-marry daughter, the nephew who's an uptight drama critic and the other nephew who's eccentricities lean distinctly sadistic. Their story has been delighting audiences on-and-off ever since, a rare case of American comedy embracing light toned lunacy rather than sledgehammer go-for-the-gut bellylaughs.
For this production, Ian Hart has modified the script in some interesting ways to attempt to bring the play into the modern era (though it does end up feeling a little stranded between now-and-then, with characters having attitudes and making references that live more comfortably anywhere between 1942 and 2022), and a local context rather than the original's Brooklyn (though the geography of the adaptation's imaginary Queanbeyan is somewhat eccentric and involves some fairly speedy travel back and forth to various Canberra institutions). To nitpick in a couple of places - both Teddy Brewster (now Bobby Brewster for this adaptation) and Jonathan Brewster require impersonations of particular American types - Teddy obsessed with Theodore Roosevelt, Jonathan bearing a resemblance to Boris Karloff - the chages to Robert Menzies and Freddie Kruger, despite the best efforts of the actors involved, Robbie Matthews and Rob de Fries, don't quite land with full context - Bobby is still doing Teddy's enthusiastic "Charge!" and bugle calls that don't really sit as well with Menzies (besides which Menzies is not a particularly easy PM to hook an impersonation on - why not Hawke?); and De Fries' Kruger impersonation is down to a couple of light scars (rather than the all-encompasisng burn marks), a stripy shirt and a lurching manner (to be fair, Kruger is pretty much the only horror icon of the last several decades that doesn't wear a mask - though the reference to having the little-old-ladies recently having gone to see a movie with him accompanying a bloodthirsty young boy wears out as soon as you realise that the last "Nightmare on Elm Street" movie came out a dozen years ago).
There are other slight indulgences with the script - it's a longish show played in three fairly full acts, which get slightly longer when Andrew Kay's delightful set proves adaptable to give us both an exterior AND an interior rather than the all-in-one-location original - the insistence on inserting bonus scenes outside the house drag out the evening a little too much for material which rarely has anything to add after the opening exposition dump.
Fortunately the core of the show is well cast. Alice Ferguson has the slightly larger of the two central roles as Abby, the one who gets the big exposition scene where she explains and justifies why she's been so generous with the poisoning, and sells the character's self-justifying morality wonderfully - she sells the show's big leap-of-faith that she and her sister can be so convinced they're just doing the right thing. Nikki-Lynn Hunter forms a good double-act with Ferguson as the goofy chef of the pair, with an infectious grin and enthusiasm (and matches accents to Ferguson's native Scottish). Jack Shanahan has the hyperactive role as Mortimer, the figure who has to have everything explaind to him and who gets to run around trying to fix everything, and gives it a spin of massive-young-man-ego and utter disregard for anybody else that's going on around him - while he's theoretically the straight-man of the show, his normality is exposed as just as nuts as anybody elses. Robbie Matthews makes the slightly script-muddled character of Bobby somewhat endearing as he's eagerly led as long as people play into his fantasy. Rob de Fries has an enthusiastically sadistic creepy manner as he lurches across the stage threatening doom to everybody. Natalie Waldron gets the role that is most clearly 1940s - a girl who's biggest feature is to whine in the middle of the stage about how she wants to get married while the man in her life either ignores or berates her, and while she doesn't exactly modernise the cliche, at least she commits to it. Kayla Ciceran is suitablly weirdly drugged-out-of-her-mind as the sinister Dr Swan. David Bennett in a triple role gives good effect to each part that makes you not wonder very much why Queanbeyan has so many Oklahomans in it. Mae Schrembi gives enthusiasm to the Police Officer Who Has Written A Play and is very enthusiastic to explain all of it to people.
All in all this is a production that hits most of the key delights of the play, even while inserting some slightly unnecessary tampering with the material.
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