Review of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) by Ken B — 26 Jul 2009

When I was in college, I went to a high school production of Arsenic and Old Lace in which the boy playing Dr. Einstein did a very creditable Peter Lorre impression in the part. As we watched, I wondered if Lorre was in the film version of the play, or if the boy just thought it would fit the role well. Having now seen the film (via ?Watch Instantly?), I?m interested in the King and I problem ? I wonder if anyone plays that role without a nod to Lorre? (There?s an episode of, um, Seinfeld?, in which a man playing the King of Siam in the stage play of the King and I complains that he?s continually asked why he isn?t bald. ?Yul Brenner was bald, not the King!? he exclaims.

Anyhow, Arsenic and Old Lace works well as a filmed version of a play. It has all the enjoyable elements of that original work, from the exasperated theatre critic to the neglected new bride to the dotty old ladies to the Teddy Roosevelt charging up the stairs. But it also does nothing beyond what the play does. (Scratch that ? I don?t know if the cab driver is in the play.) But it does hardly anything beyond the play, and this is its failing. Forgetting that filmic storytelling needs to be vibrant in a different way than the theatre does, Arsenic comes up short in its staging.

It occurs to me that this could make a great horror film with just a little twist in the presentation of the ladies and the inflection of the nephew. What if Mortimer were the schemer and Jonathan was a misunderstood homebody who loves his aunts? What if the aunts were hateful women hiding behind a mask of civility, and Teddy were disturbingly deranged rather than delightfully deranged? I wonder what that staging might look like. I wonder if the dialogue could survive given just a different inflection and staging.