Introducing your fiancee to your family is always a little tricky. But what if your family has skeletons not only in the closet, but - quite literally - buried in the basement?
That's the situation in which theatre critic Mortimer Brewster finds himself in Joseph Kesselring's 1941 black comedy Arsenic and Old Lace.
Bringing minister's daughter Elaine to meet his family, Mortimer soon discovers they aren't all the harmless eccentrics he thought they were. For one thing, since he left home, he discovers his charming elderly aunts Abby and Martha have been luring lonely old men to rent the spare room.
Then, in what they consider an act of kindness, they poison each one with home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch" of cyanide.
And that's only two of the barmy Brewsters.
The play - based in part on a real homicide scheme and originally conceived as a drama - was a huge hit on Broadway and the West End and has been frequently revived. But Ian Hart, who is directing Arsenic and Old Lace for Canberra REP, has made some changes. Not only has he trimmed the running time but he's updated it from Brooklyn in the 1940s to present-day Queanbeyan.
"Queanbeyan is to Canberra as Brooklyn is to New York," Hart said, adding that many references in the original are very dated.
So one of Mortimer's mad brothers who thought he was former US president Theodore Roosevelt now believes he's former Australian prime minister Robert Menzies.
Another, the serial killer Jonathan who travels with his own plastic surgeon, now resembles the A Nightmare on Elm Street character Freddy Krueger rather than old-time horror star Boris Karloff.
And Mortimer himself has become chief theatre critic for The Canberra Times (no resemblance to any ACT theatre critics living or dead should be inferred).
"Every single character suffers from cognitive dissonance and lives in an alternative reality."
That includes Mortimer, a theatre critic who hates theatre and who never saw what was going on in the Brewster household.
"He's an idiot," Hart said.
Playing Mortimer is Jack Shanahan, last seen playing Hamlet in REP's Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. This is a much more lively role than the melancholy Dane.
"He's extraordinary," Hart said.
"He drives the energy of the play."
And energy is indeed the word - Mortimer spends the time reeling from each shock revelation, running up and down stairs and in and out of the several doors on the multistoreyed set designed by Andrew Kay.
Mortimer is Shanahan's first lead role and the actor said it was quite a workout.
"It feels like I'm in the best shape of my life," Shanahan, who's more accustomed to quieter supporting roles, said.
"I think I get to the end of every rehearsal and ask Ian, 'Is it too fast?' and he says, 'No, no, it's lovely.'"
Arsenic and Old Lace is on at Canberra REP Theatre (Theatre 3) from June 9 (preview with Q&A) to 25, 2022. canberrarep.org.au.
