Quick Take
- Narration: Joseph Kent delivers Kesselring’s screwball dialogue with crisp timing, though a full cast would have better served the play’s overlapping comedic voices.
- Themes: dark comedy, family dysfunction, dramatic irony
- Mood: Farcical and gleefully macabre
- Verdict: A compact, wickedly funny listen that rewards anyone who appreciates theatrical comedy at its most delightfully unhinged.
I came to this one already knowing the 1944 Cary Grant film, which is both the best and worst way to experience the source material. Best, because you arrive with the timing already in your ear. Worst, because you spend the first act quietly casting the voices in your head and finding that the audiobook narration, however competent, can’t quite fill the space a full ensemble would occupy. I listened on a rainy Wednesday evening, glass of wine in hand, and found myself laughing out loud at moments I had completely forgotten from the film.
Joseph Kesselring wrote this play in 1939, and the fact that it still lands its jokes eight decades later says something real about the craft underneath the slapstick. The plot, absurd as it sounds stated plainly, is genuinely ingenious: drama critic Mortimer Brewster discovers that his sweet elderly aunts, Abby and Martha, have been quietly poisoning lonely gentlemen callers with elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and just a touch of cyanide. His brother Teddy, who believes himself to be Theodore Roosevelt, has been burying the bodies in the cellar under the impression he is interring casualties of yellow fever in Panama Canal locks. Then the genuinely threatening brother Jonathan arrives, and what was farcical becomes momentarily sinister.
Our Take on Arsenic and Old Lace
The genius of Kesselring’s script is how confidently it balances the genuinely disturbing with the absolutely ridiculous. A reviewer on Audible describes it as a play where mental illness is rampant among the characters, and that framing, while accurate, misses something essential: Kesselring uses what we might today call an ensemble of unreliable realities to build dramatic irony rather than discomfort. The aunts are not presented as villains. They genuinely believe they are performing a mercy. That gap between self-perception and reality is where most of the comedy lives, and it is a sophisticated comedic mechanism.
One reviewer notes the difficulty of maintaining comedic timing when reading a script rather than watching it performed. That is the central challenge of this audiobook format. Kent does his best, and his best is solid, but this is fundamentally a work that lives in the gap between lines, in the overlapping chaos of a well-directed stage production. As a single narrator delivering a play, something is inevitably flattened.
Why Listen to Arsenic and Old Lace
The reason to choose this audiobook over simply watching a film version is precisely that stripped-back quality. Listening to a play script without theatrical staging forces you to pay attention to language in a different way. You notice Kesselring’s construction: how he plants information early, how he paces revelations, how almost every comedic moment is earned through setup rather than surprise. Another reviewer observes that the comedy relies heavily on dramatic irony, and that is exactly right. The audience always knows more than most of the characters, and Kent’s narration lets that information sit with you quietly while the characters work through their obliviousness.
At two hours and forty-four minutes, this is also an exceptionally efficient listen. For anyone curious about mid-century American theatrical comedy, or anyone who teaches or studies drama and wants to spend time with a script that has proven its durability across high school productions, community theater, and professional stages alike, this is a practical and entertaining entry point.
What to Watch For in the Script
Pay attention to how Kesselring handles Jonathan’s arrival. Up to that point, the play is purely farcical, and the audience has been carefully trained to laugh at danger. Jonathan breaks that pattern momentarily. He is not a figure of comedy. He is genuinely menacing, and the script uses that contrast to remind the audience that the stakes, however buried under absurdist comedy, are real. It is a structural move worth noticing.
Also worth tracking is how the play engages with what one reviewer describes as contemporary theatrical commentary, references to debates about whether theater is dying that echo a Simon and Garfunkel lyric. These moments feel like Kesselring winking at his own audience, and they give the script a self-aware texture that prevents it from being merely a well-oiled joke machine.
Who Should Listen to Arsenic and Old Lace
This audiobook works well for listeners who already have some familiarity with the story through film or stage, because Kent’s single-narrator approach benefits from an audience who can populate the voices mentally. It is also a natural fit for drama students and teachers, theater lovers wanting to study the script in a portable format, and anyone who enjoys the tradition of screwball comedy and wants to hear where some of that tradition originated. Listeners hoping for a full cast dramatization with distinct character voices for each of the Brewsters may find the format limiting. If you want the full theatrical experience, seek out a recorded stage production. If you want to sit with the language itself, this delivers.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this an audiobook or a dramatized play recording?
It is a single-narrator reading of Kesselring’s play script by Joseph Kent, not a full cast dramatization. Kent gives each character a distinct flavor, but it is fundamentally one voice performing the text rather than an ensemble production.
Do I need to know the 1944 Cary Grant film before listening?
Not at all, though familiarity helps you mentally cast the voices. The script stands alone, and the comedy translates well even without any prior knowledge of the story.
How dark does it actually get? Is this suitable for younger teens?
The murders are played entirely for comedy and no violence is depicted in detail. The tone is farcical throughout, though the premise involves serial poisoning. Most parents would consider it appropriate for high school age and up, and it is frequently performed by high school theater programs.
Does the narration include distinct voices for Abby, Martha, Teddy, and Jonathan, or does Kent read all parts in a similar register?
Kent differentiates the characters, but as a single narrator he cannot fully replicate the ensemble dynamic the play was written for. The aunts and Teddy are the most clearly differentiated, while scenes with many characters simultaneously are the most flattened by the single-voice format.
