REVIVAL AT WILSHIRE : STAPLETON, ROSS BREATHE NEW LIFE INTO OLD ‘ARSENIC’

“Arsenic and Old Lace” is done to death in amateur theater, but seldom turns up on the professional stage. Jean Stapleton and Marion Ross see to it that the revival at the Wilshire Theatre is professional indeed.

Rather than kidding Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 script, a la Mickey Rooney in “A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum,” these two ladies give it their utmost loyalty. We may not believe the story, but we always believe the Brewster sisters.

As you will recall, they poison people. It’s one of their charities, a way of assisting lonely old gentlemen across to meet their loved ones on the other side. A thimbleful of the sisters’ special elderberry wine is all it takes.

They bury their clients in the basement. Rather, their nephew Teddy does (Michaeljohn McGann.) Isn’t it lucky that he thinks he’s Teddy Roosevelt? That way, they can tell him that he’s burying yellow fever casualties in Panama.

Clearly, the Brewsters aren’t your average folks next door. There’s another nephew (Jonathan Frid) who looks like Boris Karloff--or does since his last face-lift operation. There’s even a drama critic in the family (Gary Sandy.)

Alas, he’s kind of a bore. So is his girlfriend (Mary Layne.) So is the cop who wants to be a playwright (Andrew Gorman.) So are the details of getting the body into the window seat and getting the nephew untied. We keep wishing the Brewster girls had more to do in the story, and the other characters less.

Not only are the Brewsters darlings, they’re real. One can see them as devoted sisters who grew up in this house in the 1890s and probably haven’t been five miles away from it over all these years. (Marjorie Bradley Kellogg’s Victorian parlor is cozy in the lamplight, with shadows under the stairs.)

But there’s nothing eccentric about these sisters. They have the serenity and the optimism that comes from having devoted their lives to faith and good works. They trust people--which is why it’s such a shock when their creepy nephew treats them so brutally, he and that odd friend of his (Larry Storch).

Not being twins, each sister reacts differently to this emergency. Stapleton is absolutely mortified to be challenged in her own house. Watch how she clamps her shawl to her shoulders, the fringe flaring out like whip. Every gesture says: “Make me.”

Ross is more of a scaredy-cat. Her impulse in the face of rough talk is to run away. But like a cat, she’ll always creep back to see what’s going to happen next.

Lovely, detailed stuff. Each actor has read the play. (Ross remembers that her sister wears high dresses because someone once threw acid on her: No wonder she’s quick to run away.)

But there’s nothing labored in their findings. Each knows that she’s playing comedy. When Stapleton silently associates a puff of candle smoke with the idea of the souls that she and her sister send to heaven, it’s done by the way.

Each actor is also (if you’re wondering) absolutely at home in a full-size play. Their years in sitcom didn’t hurt Stapleton and Ross a bit. Perhaps it’s made them sharper.

In 1941, the nephew who looked like Boris Karloff was played by Boris Karloff. Frid is a reasonable facsimile, and has a nice wolflike anger when pressed too far. Storch is fun, too, as the mad scientist--something like Renfield in “Dracula,” without the flies.

The fun falls off rather sharply from there, which is more the fault of the script than this particular cast, directed by Brian Murray. “Arsenic and Old Lace” wasn’t exactly written for the ages. Stapleton and Ross remind us, however, that that’s the way to play it.

‘ARSENIC AND OLD LACE’ Joseph Kesselring’s 1941 mystery comedy, at the Wilshire Theatre. Director Brian Murray. Presented by Elliot Martin, Act III Productions, James M. Nederlander and Burton Kaiser. Setting Marjorie Kellogg. Costumes Jeanne Button. Lighting Pat Collins. Production stage manager Elliott Woodruff. Casting Marjorie Martin. With Jean Stapleton, Marion Ross, Gary Sandy, Larry Storch, Jonathan Frid, Mary Layne, John Eames, William Metzo, George Bamford, Kevin McClarnon, Philip Pruneau, Andrew Gorman, Paul Rosson, Michaeljohn McGann. Runs indefinitely Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m., with Saturday and Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. Tickets $20-$32.50. 8440 Wilshire Blvd. (213) 410-1062.