In the unexpectedly crowded, progressively stuffy vicinity of the Black Box Theater, I watched two sweet, little old ladies offer a glass of wine to an elderly man. Unbeknownst to him, it had been poisoned with arsenic. Unbeknownst to the world beyond the old ladies’ living room, they had done this twelve times before.

  When I walked into the 7:00 show of Arsenic and Old Lace on Saturday, I did not know what I was in for, and in hindsight, that was a good thing. What I thought was a murder mystery turned out to be no mystery at all, just a whole lot of well-timed irony and dark humor. The story revolves around the Brewster family, who are mentally unstable but inadvertently talented at hiding it. The plot kept me on the edge of my seat, the dialogue, rolling on the floor. This play, interlaced with irony, humor, and suspense, explored the particulars of insanity and the ironies of bad habits.

  Delivered by the talent and enthusiasm of North’s theater department, this small-scale production was packed with memorable characters, like the peculiar but harmless Teddy Brewster (played by sophomore Elliot Yoakum), who thought he was Teddy Roosevelt, movie critic Mortimer Brewster (played by senior Forrest Larson) who, upon discovering his aunts’ homicidal habits, frantically attempts to amend them, and the Brewster sisters themselves (played by freshman Caitlyn Fuller and junior Hannah Thompson), who felt they had a justified reason for poisoning lonely, old men.

  The make-up was fantastic, considering they had to turn many of the teenaged cast members in elderly people (and one, junior Jackson Lord, into a scar-faced maniac). The yellow-walled living room setting worked well in the black box, offering an intimacy with the audience that would have otherwise been impossible in a large theater.

  Arsenic and Old Lace: and you thought your family had problems.