Within the past couple of years, the Actors Community Theatre of Seymour board asked for suggestions of shows to perform.
Michelle Lawson said she submitted “Arsenic and Old Lace.”
In the 1944 movie directed by Frank Capra and starring Cary Grant, a Brooklyn writer of books on the futility of marriage risks his reputation when he decides to tie the knot. Things get even more complicated when he learns on his wedding day that his beloved maiden aunts are habitual murderers.
It had been a theatrical production from 1941 to 1944.
Lawson said her sister had been in a production of it in the past.
So when an ACTS board member let her know it was going to be included in this season and asked if she wanted to be the director, Lawson immediately said yes.
“It’s a great show,” she said. “The story itself is actually based on a true story. They changed it a little bit for comedic value. … I love that it’s a dark comedy. I have a twisted sense of humor. Murdering people as a mercy, that’s hilarious.”
The show will be presented at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and again at 7:30 p.m. March 31 and April 1 at ACTS, 357 Tanger Blvd., Suite 208, at Shops at Seymour. Tickets are $12.
Lawson initially had some people in mind for certain characters in the show.
“Because I have worked with this group in the past, this is my third show with ACTS, I did kind of want some specific people for certain roles, but I didn’t want to put any pressure on them,” she said.
After two nights of auditions and reviewing some video submissions, Lawson had the cast set.
“For the most part, most of my choices felt like, ‘Yes, that’s my guy,’” she said.
Since then, she has been able to watch the cast members embrace their roles.
“It’s great. It’s just so much fun,” Lawson said. “It brings so much joy to my heart watching everyone become these characters.”
Prominent characters in the show are the elderly aunts who have a penchant for poisoning wine, Abby and Martha Brewster, played by Elyse McGill and Rebecca Fowler, respectively.
Being familiar with the movie, McGill said she had no problem playing the role of Abby.
“She is just a prim and proper old lady who likes to murder people in her spare time,” she said, laughing. “I mean, we really don’t like to refer to it as murder. It’s really one of our charities. We just like to help lonely old men find their peace.”
One man who manages to not become one of the aunts’ poisoning victims is Mr. Gibbs, played by Horace Tucker. He stops by their house looking for a place to stay.
“I’m Mr. Gibbs. That’s all you know about me other than the fact that I don’t have a home and I don’t have a family. I’m all alone in the world, and I was a Presbyterian,” Tucker said.
“Well, that’s very important to us. We like to hold religious services when we bury the bodies in the cellar,” McGill said, referring to the aunts.
Gibbs gets chased off from the house before the aunts can kill him. Tucker, however, comes back in the third act as Lt. Rooney.
“They are vastly different,” Tucker said of his two roles.
When he was in college, Tucker said he played the role of Jonathan Brewster in “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Jonathan, one of the aunts’ nephews, uses plastic surgery to hide from police. Forty years later, he played the role again at a community theater in Indianapolis.
Now, he’s in his third production of the show.
“The show was originally written as a melodrama, very dark,” Tucker said. “The cast couldn’t keep a straight face. It is just so hilarious.”
Over the years in his theater career, Tucker has played everything from walk-ons and one-liners to Oscar Madison in “The Odd Couple,” and he has been in musicals, dramas and comedies — sometimes, all three at once.
“I like this show because this time, I don’t have to be Jonathan,” he said, smiling.
Lawson said she encourages people to check out the ACTS production of this classic black comedy about the only thing more deadly than poison — family.
“It’s a great time,” she said. “We put a lot of love and blood, sweat and tears, literally, into this show to bring it to life and give people a lovely experience. … We put a lot of love into this, and that will come through performance nights.”
If you go
What: Actors Community Theatre of Seymour’s production of “Arsenic and Old Lace”
When: 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday and 7:30 p.m. March 31 and April 1
Where: ACTS, 357 Tanger Blvd., Suite 208, at Shops at Seymour
Tickets: $12 (available online at seymouracts.ticketleap.com/arsenic-and-old-lace)
Director: Michelle Lawson
Tech crew: Hunter Sporleder and Hannah McGill
Set builder: Jesse Lawson
Cast: Elyse McGill, Jeremy Hendrix, Danny Stout, Gabriella Parisi, Alex Lawson, Rebecca Fowler, Alexis Kieninger, Rieder MacDonald, Horace Tucker, Mike DeShong, Tracy McManis, Zach Thompson, Amanda Bott