After a summer hiatus of camps and workshops, The Coronado Playhouse (CPH) resumes its 2026 season with the 1940s-era Broadway classic, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” written by Joseph Kesselring. Made popular by the 1944 film starring Cary Grant, this dark comedy is about two elderly sisters, Abby and Martha Brewster, who rent out a room in their house to elderly gentlemen in order to murder them. After serving them a concoction of arsenic, cyanide and elderberry wine, the women enlist the help of their nephew, Teddy, who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt, to bury the cadavers in their basement.
The stars of the show are Amy Dell and Kat Fitzpatrick as the Brewster sisters, who steal the spotlight with their killer performances; they disappear into their roles as effortlessly as they entice their victims to their dooms. The anchor of the story is their other nephew Mortimer, a young, passionate theater critic whose self-importance is only aggrandized by actor Paul Bonner’s exponentially eclectic performance that constantly matches the growing chaos of the story. After discovering a dead body in his aunts’ window seat – and after the unexpected arrival of his brutish brother, Jonathan, and his eclectic plastic surgeon, the alcoholic German, Dr. Herman Einstein – Mortimer must hold on to his last shred of sanity.
With “Arsenic and Old Lace,” Coronado Playhouse has assembled one of its strongest casts of the 2026 season. The show is carried entirely by the performances of its stars, but also Steven Jensen as the thuggish Jonathan Brewster, Joseph Vitti as the over-the-top Dr. Einstein, and the line-up of actors in auxiliary roles. What most of these actors have in common is their stunning physicality: Jensen’s presence on stage is so looming and dastardly, it’s as if he’s a threat even to the audience. Bonner’s facial expressions do more to elicit humor than anything in Kesselring’s script. And Vitti moves with such gangliness, it’s as if his bones were replaced with wet towels.
Director Kira Blaskovich expressed only praise for her cast. “One of the most important aspects of putting on a show is, of course, the casting, and I was really really lucky to have a huge number of actors in this area who were interested in auditioning for it,” she said in an interview. “I’m interested in the psychology of the characters and how that can be opened and explored for the audience to individually connect with each of the characters. I cast [these actors] because they’re artists, so they helped me discover new things about the characters.”
Where this show falters is not in the outstanding casting, the clear direction, or the fabulous set-design and lighting; it’s in the play itself. The script is littered with word-play, malapropisms, and cultural references that just did not land with the contemporary audience, which was made painfully obvious by the dead-silent pauses following many of the jokes.
The clearest example was when Dr. Einstein tells Jonathan that he looks like Boris Karloff, who originally played Jonathan in its first run on Broadway in 1941. The actors paused for laughter, but the joke flew under the noses of young audience members who had never heard of Karloff, and over the heads of older audience members who probably didn’t remember him. [For reference, Karloff’s most famous roles were as Frankenstein’s monster in the classic Universal picture, “Frankenstein” (1931) and the mummy, Imhotep, in “The Mummy” (1932)]. There was a similar lack of laughter around Teddy, whose entire character relies on specific historical references to President Theodore Roosevelt, a personage that most people under 40 recognize chiefly from “Night At The Museum.”
Coronado Playhouse had a similar issue with their production of “Barefoot in the Park,” which ran earlier this season. A celebrated play might be a classic, but that does not make it timeless. While the premise remains funny, and the audience generally responded well to the plot, too many of the isolated individual elements were in need of an update. Fortunately, the next show, “Into the Woods,” a modern musical on the timeless Brothers Grimm fairy tales, is sure to be a hit with all-ages.
“Arsenic and Old Lace” runs through Sept. 6. Performances take place at 7 p.m. Friday through Saturday, with 2 p.m. matinees available on Saturday and Sundays. Tickets are $30, with discounts available for seniors over 62, active military, and students. Buy tickets at www.coronadoplayhouse.org
