The Chelsea High School Drama Club opens its fall play, “Arsenic and Old Lace,” on Thursday, November 12, and runs it for three nights. Curtain is 7 p.m. on Thursday, Friday and Saturday in the Chelsea High School auditorium, 299 Everett Avenue. Tickets cost $10 online and $12 on the day of the performance, Chelsea Public Schools said in a post on its Facebook page this week.
Tickets and times
- Thursday, November 12: 7 p.m.
- Friday, November 13: 7 p.m.
- Saturday, November 14: 7 p.m.
- Where: Chelsea High School auditorium, 299 Everett Avenue.
- Price: $10 bought online ahead of time, $12 on the day of the show.
- Online sales: the Drama Club’s page on GoFan, gofan.co/app/school/MA14544_1, which lists each night as a separate event.
The play
“Arsenic and Old Lace” is a dark comedy by Joseph Kesselring that opened on Broadway in January 1941 and ran for 1,444 performances. It is set in the Brooklyn living room of the Brewster family, where a nephew, Mortimer, learns that the two sweet elderly aunts who raised him have been poisoning lonely old men, and spends the rest of the evening trying to contain the damage. Frank Capra’s 1944 film version, with Cary Grant as Mortimer, is the one most people know.
The district has not posted a cast list or the names of the student crew, and the director is not named in the announcement. The post describes the show as the Drama Club’s fall play and invites the public to see “the amazing talents of our students on display.”
A busy fall for the arts at the high school
The play comes in the same week that the Chelsea High Concert Band, the Cantare choir and the orchestra performed at the Veterans Day ceremony at the Massachusetts Veterans Home at Chelsea on Tuesday, according to the district. The student report at the School Committee meeting of November 5 gave the same dates and prices; we covered that meeting here.