THEATER REVIEWS : ‘Arsenic and Old Lace’ Still Buries the Audience With Laughs : The Camarillo Community Theatre production of the old favorite is uneven but delivers the comedy.

Since its 1941 Broadway debut, “Arsenic and Old Lace” has endured as one of America’s most performed and beloved comedies. Its tale of a pair of sweet old ladies with a dozen bodies buried in their basement--and Uncle Teddy, who thinks he’s Theodore Roosevelt, and Uncle Jonathan, who looks like Boris Karloff--provokes wall-to-wall laughter even among those who have little idea of what Boris Karloff looked like when not made up as Frankenstein’s monster.

The Camarillo Community Theatre is presenting its second production of the play in seven years, this time under the direction of Rebecca Hanes. It’s an uneven presentation (some of the actors are more, um, confident than others), but worth seeing.

An old anecdote, probably apocryphal, has it that Joseph Kesselring had conceived the play he originally called “Bodies in Our Cellar” as a serious drama, and that producers Howard Lindsay and Russell Crouse convinced him to turn it into a comedy. If true, the story confirms Lindsay and Crouse as two of the more brilliant minds in the American theater. And if Kesselring’s ego was initially damaged at the prospect of an audience laughing at his work, he (and his estate) have been compensated by generations’ worth of happy audiences and what must be millions of dollars of accumulated royalties.

Valorie Paradise-Lant and Rochelle Wiltfang portray lovable but thoroughly addled Abby and Martha Brewster, who as an act of charity invite lonely men into their homes. They feed them home-made elderberry wine laced with a combination of arsenic, cyanide and strychnine; and put them out of their misery complete with a good Christian funeral.

Gabriel de la Vega is Teddy Brewster, alternately charging up the stairway--to him it’s San Juan Hill--and down into the basement, where he buries the sisters’ victims in the “locks” he’s dug for the Panama Canal.

Love interest is provided by the Brewsters’ son, Mortimer, and his fiancee, Elaine Harper--daughter of the Brewsters’ minister. The household is running smoothly enough (Mortimer and Elaine ignorant of Abby and Martha’s “charity,” and everybody indulging the harmless Teddy) until the surprising appearance of wayward son Jonathan and a plastic surgeon named Dr. Einstein.

Mortimer, who seems not to share the family battiness, is a drama critic for a New York newspaper and hates theater. Tim Ahern plays him as written: somewhat of a dullard (imagine!), though bright and pleasant enough. Susan Wiltfang’s Elaine is very physical, and quite funny, as is de la Vega in the showy role of Teddy.

Other comic highlights are provided by Jason Grazino and David Banuelos as Jonathan and Einstein--Grazino doesn’t remotely resemble Karloff (unless Karloff wore a beard and pony tail at one point in his career), but does attempt the voice with good results, and Banuelos’ wavering Peter Lorre accent is quite apt for Einstein. Together, they’re quite a pair.

“Arsenic and Old Lace” has an abundance of dumb policemen, of whom R.J. Henchy is the dumbest and the funniest.

The show gains extra points for its set, extravagant by community theater standards and including a small framed picture that has a comic life of its own.

Details

* WHAT: “Arsenic and Old Lace.”

* WHEN: Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through Feb. 25; Sunday matinees at 2 p.m. this weekend and Feb. 12 only.

* WHERE: Camarillo Airport Theater, 330 Skyway Drive, on the grounds of Camarillo Airport.

* HOW MUCH: $10 general admission; $8 students, seniors and active military. A special family plan is available; call for details.

* FYI: For reservations or further information, call 388-5716.