(Above: From left, Judi Weinkauf, William Hulings and Carol Philips star in Radio Redux’s opening show of the 2018-19 season, Arsenic and Old Lace; photos by Paul Carter)
By Randi Bjornstad
What would you do if you found out that your elderly maiden aunts are routinely offing their elderly men boarders?
That’s what happens in the perennially popular Arsenic and Old Lace, a wacky comedy that premiered as a film and then a radio drama in the mid-1940s and now opens the 10th season of Fred Crafts’ Radio Redux on the stage of the Soreng Theater at the Hult Center for the Performing Arts.
In the Radio Redux version, actor Bill Hulings plays the horrified nephew, Mortimer Brewster, who for all his adult life had eschewed the concept of marriage as “an old fashioned superstition.”
But he finally succumbs to the charms of Elaine Harper (Radio Redux’s Kim Donahey), who grew up next door to Mortimer in the household of her minister father.
Right after the wedding, Mortimer pays a visit to his aunts, Abby and Martha Brewster who raised him and his brother, Teddy, who believes himself to be Theodore Roosevelt.
During the visit, Mortimer discovers a corpse stashed in the window seat and immediately assumes that Teddy, acted by Bill Barrett, has done the deed.
But, no. His cheerful aunts, portrayed by Carol Philips as Abby and Judi Weinkauf as Martha, confess they they’ve been ending the suffering of these old men by giving them elderberry wine spiked with arsenic, strychnine and “just a pinch of cyanide.”
The rest of the bodies are in the basement, buried there by Teddy who as Roosevelt believed they all died of yellow fever while helping to dig the Panama Canal.
As if that weren’t enough mayhem, a third, long-lost brother and serial killer Jonathan, acted by Don Aday, shows up with his accomplice, a plastic surgeon named Dr. Hermann Einstein — known locally as dactor
Achilles Massahos — who attempted while drunk to change Jonathan’s appearance but unwittingly gave him the face of Frankenstein’s monster.
So when the not-so-bright-themselves police, played by Ken Hof and Rebecca Nachison, arrive hot on Jonathan’s heels, they naturally find a bit of chaos going on.
The rest of the cast includes Al Villanueva, Jennifer Sellers, Diana Aday and Fred Crafts, with sound effects by Judy Sinnott and Jennifer Sellers.
Arsenic and Old Lace
When: 7:30 p.m. on Sept. 21-22; matinee at 2 p.m. on Sept. 23
Where: Soreng Theater, Hult Center for the Performing Arts, One Eugene Center (Seventh and Willamette streets in downtown Eugene)
Additional details: Performance before the show and during intermission by the gypsy jazz combo Hot Club Eugene; lectures 45 minutes before each showtime in the lower-level Jacobs Community Room by radio-and-film historian Patrick Lucanio; an exhibit of historic memorabilia in the lobby by Bob Hart of the Lane County Historical Museum; and radio collectibles by curator Dennis Wright of the Radio Days Theater of the Mind Museum in Sutherlin
Tickets: $22 regular, $19 for senior citizens, $15 for students and youths, plus discounts for group and season tickets; available online at radioreduxusa.com or hultcenter.org or at the Hult Center box office, 541-682-5000, from noon to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Friday and 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday
Complete Radio Redux season
- Arsenic and Old Lace — Sept. 21-23
- The Day the Earth Stood Still — Nov. 9-11
- A Cowboy Christmas — Dec. 21-23
- Casablanca — Feb. 8-10
- Burns & Allen and Friends — April 12-14
Information: radioreduxusa.com or 541-343-4251