WILLITS >> Auditions for roles in “Arsenic and Old Lace” will be held at the Willits Community Theatre playhouse Oct. 25 from 12 p.m. to 2, and Oct. 29 from 7 p.m. to 9.
Arsenic and Old Lace, Joseph Kesselring”s classic 1941 comedy, tells the story of Abby and Martha Brewster, two older sisters who run a boarding house in Brooklyn and who undertake a private campaign to stamp out loneliness. After a drink of their special elderberry wine, old men usually wind up dead and buried down in the basement.
When this startling development is discovered by their nephew, drama critic Mortimer Brewster, he does everything in his power to stop the serial killing while also protecting his aunts. The twists and turns of the plot have made the play a classic of the American theatre for seven decades.
The call is for two older women (55 to 75), one younger woman (25 to 35) and 11 men 20 years old and upward. Key roles for the men are those of Mortimer, his older brother Teddy – a comic character who thinks he is President Theodore Roosevelt – and their older brother Jonathan, a psychopathic killer. Another interesting character is that of Dr. Herman Einstein, a medical quack who has performed a number of face transplants on Jonathan, all of them more or less failures.
Directing the play is Jason Edington, an actor and director who has worked extensively in theatre over the past three years. Scripts are available at the Willits Public Library.
For information, call Jason Edington at 367-2116.
