Arsenic and Old Lace is a beloved dark comedy about Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who discovers, on the eve of his own wedding, that his two sweet, seemingly harmless elderly aunts have taken to poisoning lonely old bachelors with homemade elderberry wine laced with arsenic, believing they are performing an act of charity, and burying the bodies in the cellar with the help of their delusional brother, who thinks he is Theodore Roosevelt digging the Panama Canal. Matters grow even more chaotic with the return of Mortimer's murderous, plastic-surgery-disfigured brother and his sinister accomplice, who have secrets, and a body, of their own to hide. As Mortimer frantically tries to protect his aunts from the law while keeping his horrified fiancee from learning the family secret, the farce escalates into a whirlwind of mistaken identities, hidden corpses, and comic panic. The play's blend of homicidal mayhem and cheerful, cozy domesticity has made it one of the most enduringly popular black comedies in American theater. Its irresistible premise and broad comic roles have kept it a staple of community theater programming for decades.

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