A to Z Challenge - K is for Kesselring

Okay, be honest and show me your hands. How many people thought  Arsenic and Old Lace  was written by Agatha Christie? I'll admit that when I first heard the title years ago I thought it must be a Christie story. It just sounded like something she would write. She did write several plays, and it would be easy to assign this black comedy to her, but it was written by Joseph Kesselring in 1939.

The story, originally titled Bodies in the Cellar, revolves around Mortimer Brewster, a drama critic who has a crazy, homicidal family whose antics often get the attention of local police in Brooklyn, NY. His love interest, Elaine Harper, is keen on getting married, but Mortimer is not so sure when he discovers that his two spinster aunts have taken to murdering lonely old men by poisoning them with a glass of home-made elderberry wine laced with arsenic, strychnine, and "just a pinch" of cyanide. Then there's the brother who believes he is Theodore Roosevelt and digs locks for the Panama Canal in the cellar of the Brewster home, and another brother who has committed murder and is on the lam with his alcoholic accomplice, Dr. Einstein.

All told it is a cast of zany characters, and I was thrilled to have the opportunity to play Martha, one of the sisters, in a production at a local community theatre two years ago. Here I am with Elaine Harper, the girl Mortimer is going to marry.

I don't look nearly as sinister there as I do in this shot taken when I was in a different costume, trying to convince a gentleman that a glass of wine is just what he needs.

Kesselring, 1902 to 1967, wrote twelve plays, and Arsenic and Old Lace  was the most successful. For two  years he taught and directed stage productions at Bethel College in Newton, Kansas, before returning to New York to work with an amateur theatrical group in Niagara. He started writing plays in 1933, completing 12 original plays, of which four were produced on Broadway: Wisdom in Women (1935), Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), Four Twelves are 48 (1951), and Mother of that Wisdom (1963).

The role of Martha was one that I always wanted to play and will be a favorite no matter how many other roles I get. What character would you like to play on stage?

A to Z Challenge - C is for Coward and Christie

One of the better known playwrights whose name starts with "C" is Sir Noël Coward who was an English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer, born in 1899 and died in 1973. He had quite a flamboyant personality, on stage and off, and Time magazine once referred to his sense of personal style as "a combination of cheek and chic, pose and poise"

Image Courtesy of Wikipedia

 His list of credits is impressive, and two of his most popular plays are "Blithe Spirit" and "The Rat Trap". He adapted "Blithe Spirit" for film and also wrote other screenplays, as well as a number of original songs. I have seen several production of "Blithe Spirit" and would love to play the role of  Elvira, the ghost who haunts her husband, Charles, in an attempt to drive his second wife, Ruth, away.

Agatha Christie is another successful English playwright, although most people associate her with her novels. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, Christie is the best-selling novelist of all time. Her novels have sold roughly 4 billion copies.  And Then There Were None is Christie's best-selling novel with 100 million sales to date, making it the world's best-selling mystery ever.

What some people don't know is that Christie's stage play "The Mousetrap" holds the record for the longest initial run:  it opened at the Ambassadors Theatre in London on  November 25, 1952 and as of 2012 was still running after more than 25,000 performances.

We staged "The Mousetrap" here in our local community theatre several years ago. I did not have a role in the show, however. This was before I got brave enough to step on stage, but I did work behind the scenes. Almost any job in theatre can be fun and can feed the creative spirit.

What do you do to feed your creative spirit?

Friday's Odds and Ends

 There is some talk of raising the speed limit in Texas to 85MPH. Silly me, I thought that was already the speed limit. If I'm driving 70 to 75 MPH, cars zoom by me all the time.

The Dallas Zoo was briefly charging a giraffe-greeting fee until enough patrons complained. Apparently the zoo was trying to boos revenue by charging people to walk out on a platform that allows them to see the tall beasts up close and personal. The charge was $5.00.

Zoo officials were smart in rescinding that charge. Imagine having to explain to a four or five year old child that he or she could not see the giraffe close up because Mommy didn't have the extra five dollars with her.

And now for some personal business. We're having a party at the Author Roast and Toast blog where I am the guest with Angel and Sarah from Open Season. Stop by if you get a chance. There are some other great guests, including Agatha Christie, and some wonderful food and drinks. We are solving the mystery of who killed the IRS agent, and one lucky person will win an ARC of Open Season.

Also wanted to announce that I have two new short stories up on Amazon for the Kindle. SAHM I Am   and The Visitor 

SAHM I Am is a humorous sci-fi story. Technology may be on the verge of having sophisticated home computers that run an entire household, but have the scientists taken into consideration the human factor? When SAHM, a Sensor Activated Home Manager, is field tested at the O'Neal home, he's up against the biggest challenge a computer has ever faced; one Shanna O'Neal.


The Visitor was first written as an assignment in a writing class to adapt a classic fairy tale, and I chose Goldilocks and the Three Bears. A camping trip in the Rockies becomes most interesting when a stranger shows up and the Cantrell family has to find out who has been sneaking into their cabin.