By Melinda Miller

“Arsenic and Old Lace” at the Lancaster Opera House is an easy show to like. The rambling set looks like it was lifted straight from Great-Grandma’s Victorian, the lovely costumes could’ve come from her closet and the characters are true “characters” in every sense of the word.

Who wouldn’t enjoy a visit with the Brewster sisters? With bodies in the basement, Teddy Roosevelt charging up the staircase and an escaped mass murderer who has come to stay, it couldn’t be more fun. 

We will summarize: Actors Mary McMahon and Pamela Rose Mangus are vintage treasures as the elderly spinsters Abby and Martha Brewster, who have been making a habit of poisoning lonely older men, a most extreme cure for depression. The Brewster household also includes Teddy, a nephew who imagines himself to be President Theodore Roosevelt. While not a large role, mostly involving charges up San Juan Hill (the back staircase), Kevin Craig plays it with a comic gravitas that brightens every scene he’s in.

The main nephews, however, are Mortimer (R.J. Voltz), a recently engaged theater critic who is stunned when he finds out what the aunties have been up to, and his estranged (emphasis on the “strange”) brother Jonathan, who shows up unexpectedly with another body and homicidal issues of his own.

And that’s just Act 1. Two more action-packed acts follow, full of intrigue and complications, and, above all, comedy.

Playwright Joseph Kesselring used a deft touch to stay just this side of slapstick when he wrote “Arsenic” in the 1930s, a Golden Age for madcap comedies. There are more than a dozen characters, including a minister, police officers, and a sketchy surgeon who never bothered to get licensed (plus Misters Hoskins and Spenalzo, who do not have speaking parts, as they are dead). 

Even knowing how this all comes out (the Cary Grant movie version was fairly faithful to the play), it’s a lot of fun watching the revelations pile up, layer by layer, as those in the know try to keep those who don’t in the dark. 

Voltz as the level-headed Mortimer and Anne Roaldi Boucher as Mortimer’s fiancé Elaine provide suitably flustered islands of sanity amid the near-chaos. Don Gervasi opens and closes the action as different guests of the sisters, the first one keeping us on edge before he safely walks out the door and the last leaving us with a final toast. David C. Mitchell also escapes with his life in one role before returning to slap on the cuffs as Lieutenant Rooney. 

The other officers who are charmed by the sweet Brewster sisters are played by Nathanial Higgins and Rich Kraemer, along with Mike Garvey, lovably enthusiastic as the would-be playwright trapped in a policeman’s life.  

Philip Salemi Jr. is a prefect bundle of nerves as plays Dr. Einstein, a “practicing” plastic surgeon who finds himself uncomfortably partnered with the criminal Jonathan Brewster, a Frankenstein’s monster of menace, surprisingly well played by Jeffrey Coyle, who I am sure must be a really nice guy if you met him in person, but as Jonathan .. brrrrrruggh! 

Director Peter Palmisano knew exactly what he was doing by letting the play be itself, and it works so well because of the perfect set by David Dwyer and painted by Anna Krempholtz, props provided by Spencer Dick and costuming and wardrobe by Timmy Goodman and Elaine Heckler. The entire Lancaster Opera House crew did a stellar job. 

The good, old-fashioned theatrical “Arsenic and Old Lace” continues for one more weekend, through Oct. 20, at the Lancaster Opera House, 21 Central Ave., Lancaster. Showtimes are 7:30 p.m. Oct. 18 and 19, and 2:30 p.m. Oct. 20. Tickets are $35; $33 for seniors, $20 for students, at lancasteropera.org.