‘Arsenic and Old Lace’

Abby and Martha Brewster, two sweet, silver-haired spinster aunts, practice the kindest form of charity: elderberry wine laced with arsenic for lonely old gentlemen. Their fast-talking theater-critic nephew Mortimer uncovers the macabre family secret amid his whirlwind engagement. Add a brother channeling Teddy Roosevelt and a Boris Karloff-lookalike criminal, and the farce bursts into pandemonium—as the cellar stacks up with bodies. A timeless hit, Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace is a classic dark comedy about the only thing more deadly than poison: family.