Press Release

Fall Laced With Full Measure of Theater at Great Lakes Theater Festival

August 20, 2007
GLTF’s resident company of actors performs Arsenic and Old Lace and Measure for Measure in rotating repertory to open the Festival’s 46^th season.

CLEVELAND, OH – Great Lakes Theater Festival (GLTF) will commence its 46^th season with a Fall Repertory that features Joseph Kesselring’s madcap American comedy, Arsenic and Old Lace (Lace), and William Shakespeare’s thrilling drama, Measure for Measure (Measure). The productions will be performed in rotating repertory at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square, September 21 – October 21, 2007. The Fall Repertory features a single company of actors performing two alternating plays on the same stage over five weeks. Drew Barr will direct Arsenic and Old Lace and Risa Brainin will direct Measure for Measure.

Great Lakes Theater Festival’s 2007-08 season is presented with generous support from The Cleveland Foundation, the Ohio Arts Council and SCK. Media sponsors for the season are Cleveland Free Times, Cleveland Magazine, The Plain Dealer, WCLV 104.9 FM, WCPN 90.3 FM ideastream and WKSU 89.7 FM.

"To the person, from our actors to our directors to our design and creative staff, I couldn’t be more thrilled with the company that we’ve been able to assemble for our Fall Repertory," remarked Charles Fee, GLTF’s Producing Artistic Director, of his artistic collaborators. "I will tell you that it takes an extraordinarily talented group of artists to be able to bring a great work of Shakespeare to life on one night and then switch gears completely to conjure a classic American comedy the following evening. I can’t wait to showcase these two amazing productions for our community as only Great Lakes Theater Festival can in Cleveland."

The 2007-08 Fall Repertory opens with Arsenic and Old Lace. Beware the Brewster sisters of Brooklyn, New York… especially if you’re a lonely, older bachelor. One drink of these elderly eccentrics’ arsenic-laced elderberry wine could land you buried in their basement! Meet Martha and Abby, a dangerous dynamic duo with a chilling sense of "charity" and an outrageously eclectic supporting cast in a magnificently macabre and madcap masterpiece. One of the theater’s most endearing comedies, Joseph Kesselring’s hilarious farce is an American classic.

William Shakespeare’s thriller Measure for Measure completes the Festival’s Fall Repertory pairing. In Measure, law and lust collide when the Duke of Vienna takes an abrupt leave of absence and places the strict Angelo in charge. Determined to rid his society of corruption, Angelo instead finds himself at the mercy of his own desire for the pious Isabella who is suddenly forced to make an impossible choice between her brother and her God. Wickedly comic, William Shakespeare’s thriller exposes the chaos of a society struggling for love beneath a repressive regime.

GLTF’s 2007 Fall Repertory directing corps is comprised of a powerhouse pair of talented theater artists. Drew Barr will return to GLTF for a sixth consecutive season to stage Arsenic and Old Lace after acclaimed GLTF productions of Love’s Labour’s Lost (2006), You Can’t Take It With You (2005) and The Taming of the Shrew (2004). Barr has directed in all six years of Fee’s tenure. Risa Brainin will complete the Festival’’s Fall Repertory directing dream team when she helms the Shakespearean thriller, Measure for Measure. Brainin’s boldly imaginative production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar garnered a Northern Ohio Live Award of Achievement in Theater for Great Lakes Theater Festival in 2004. This marks the third time that Brainin has directed for the Festival.

The Fall Repertory acting company is headlined by faces familiar to Northeast Ohio. Cleveland favorite and GLTF Associate Artistic Director, Andrew May, will take center stage this fall portraying Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace and Angelo in Measure for Measure. Actors Laura Perrotta and Lynn Allison will transform into the elderly Brewster sisters for the Festival’s production of Arsenic and Old Lace. In all, nineteen actors comprise GLTF’s 2007 artistic company this fall.

Opening Night performances of Arsenic and Old Lace (September 22^nd) and Measure for Measure (October 6^th) have been scheduled for Saturday evenings with preview performances of both productions scheduled for the preceding Friday nights. Curtain times for all evening performances will remain at 7:30 p.m., with a 1:30 p.m. curtain time for Saturday matinees and a 3:00 p.m. curtain time for Sunday matinees. Both productions in GLTF’s Fall Repertory will continue to offer sign-interpreted and audio-described performances as well as the popular Director’s Night and Playnotes pre-show discussion series. (Consult the performance calendar for complete date and time information.)

Single tickets for Great Lakes Theater Festival productions range in price from $22-$56 (Student tickets $13 – any performance / any seat) and are available by calling (216) 241-6000, by ordering online or by visiting the Playhouse Square Ticket Office. Groups of ten or more receive discounts, as do educators and students.

Since 1962, Great Lakes Theater Festival has brought the pleasure, power and relevance of classic theater to the widest possible audience in Northern Ohio. The first resident company of Playhouse Square, GLTF’s celebrates its 25^th season at the Ohio Theatre this year.

At a Glance

* Member of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States.

Reviews: Arsenic and Old Lace

Plain Dealer
Monday, September 24, 2007
’41 yuk-fest knocks ’em dead
Tony Brown, Plain Dealer Theater Critic

Family dysfunction and death lately have become fashionable subjects for comedy among playwrights and screenwriters – see any of the dubious works of Pulitzer Prize-winning David Lindsay-Abaire or any episode of Six Feet Under for examples.

But none of the current practitioners of this craft do it with the blithe verve and happy-go-lucky farcical chicanery whipped up by Joseph Kesselring, Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse in Arsenic and Old Lace.

If you doubt that sweeping assessment, or if you just want an evening full of hearty belly-laughs, TiVo the Tribe game and get up from your easy chair.

Get out and witness the all-new Great Lakes Theater Festival production of this 1941 classic Broadway yuk-fest that opened over the weekend at the Ohio Theatre in Playhouse Square.

Before you send those eyeballs rolling back in your head, be advised that director Drew Barr does not gum up the works by attempting to modernize the play, whose quaintness is part of its charm. Nor does he settle for yet another community theater-style restaging.

Instead, Barr deftly slices down the middle, leaving the script alone but framing it with a ghoulishness that heightens the comedy, the play’s Shakespearean-bastard twist and its Mendelian-genetic undertones.

And, if you think you could never see a funnier Mortimer Brewster than the crotchety drama critic created by Cary Grant in Frank Capra’s 1944 film, wait until you get a load of Cleveland actor Andrew May’s fussy, adrenaline-fueled antics.

It’s not perfect. Consider the casting of two youngish, middle-aged actresses to play the elderly, elderberry-wine dispensing, serial-killing Brewster spinsters.

While neither convinces us they’re up there in age, at least Laura Perrotta’s eccentric tics make her Aunt Martha an unpredictable and entertaining caricature. Lynn Allison’s Aunt Abby, while serviceable, seems bland by comparison.

There are a host of other fine performances, especially David Anthony Smith’s blustery, red-faced Teddy “Mr. President” Brewster, Dougfred Miller’s menacingly laconic Jonathan “Boris Karloff” Brewster and M.A. Taylor’s ferret-faced Dr. “Herman” Einstein.

Russell Metheny’s cleverly rotating set, Charlotte Yetman’s stitch-perfect period costumes and Mary Louise Geiger’s melodramatic lighting all make their contributions.

But it is Barr’s deceptively simple interpretation of the script, combined with a framing device (let’s not spoil it here; suffice it to say you won’t have to wait until the finale to see all those dead bodies in the cellar), that makes the evening so enjoyable.

At the center of it all is a positively maniacal May.

He screws up that chiseled-featured face into every possible contortion. He leaps on furniture. He wobbles around on numb legs. He gleefully spits Mortimer’s invective. And he celebrates his newfound illegitimacy with sexual abandon.

For his pains, he got at least three show-stopping spontaneous ovations at Saturday’s opening. And we get a vintage Arsenic and Old Lace for our times.

Scene Magazine
September 26, 2007
Pick This Poison: The girls are handing out fatal, funny cocktails again in Arsenic and Old Lace
By Christine Howey, Scene Magazine Theater Critic

We all have our images of serial killers, and they usually look like the bogeymen we pictured as children: dead-eyed, macabre men with a lip curl and not a whit of mercy in their tiny, blackened hearts.

But what are the odds that such purveyors of evil could look like sweet and doting grandmothers, or that their story could be one of the funniest stage productions in recent memory? The chances are good if you buy a ticket to Arsenic and Old Lace, now at the Great Lakes Theater Festival. Yes, the old warhorse has been pulled out once again, and it is almost unfailingly hilarious, thanks to a talented cast, inspired direction from Drew Barr, and a run crew made up entirely of corpses.

First performed in 1941, Arsenic has become a theatrical staple, the kitchen equivalent of Gold Medal flour. It has everything, including the wacky Brewster family and Keystone Cops-style gendarmes. But what it needs is a collection of players gifted with laser-sharp comic timing and a director who knows how to make mayhem funny. This production has both in spades.

Most of us know about the strange Brewster sisters, Abby and Martha, who have taken it upon themselves to usher their golden-age room renters off this mortal coil via arsenic-laced glasses of elderberry wine. Hey, they just want to save the old guys from a sad life of isolation and depression. Actors Lynn Allison and Laura Perrotta, as Abby and Martha respectively, have a special chemistry apart from their diabolical concoctions. Sweetly supportive of each other, they wield their index fingers like punji sticks in the direction of anyone who dares interrupt their activities.

Nephew Mortimer becomes aware of his aunties’ evil hobby when he finds a corpse in the well of a window seat. He promptly becomes unglued. And let’s face it, no local actor delaminates with quite the gusto of Andrew May. While some might wish for a few more underplayed deliveries, May triggers gales of laughter with his contorted double takes. He is matched at times by Kathryn Cherasaro, who plays his fiancée Elaine with energetic abandon, particularly in a manic chase around a divan.

Weaving his way through the proceedings is the Brewsters’ lunatic brother, who imagines himself Theodore Roosevelt, braying “Charge!” at the slightest provocation and dutifully burying bodies in the basement, which he has been told is the Panama Canal under construction. David Anthony Smith is a beaming, bounteous Teddy, providing an innocent counterpoint to the sisters’ skulduggery.

And as for the villain of the piece, Dougfred Miller is the scary, sociopathic older brother Jonathan Brewster, his greasy black hair emblazoned with a skunklike stripe of white. His murderous competition with the lovely sisters is one of many continuing jokes in this darkly amusing romp.

Reviews: Measure for Measure

The Plain Dealer
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Great Lakes Theater Festival’s Measure for Measure right at home in the 21st century
Tony Brown, Plain Dealer Theater Critic

Mahatma Gandhi, whose 138th birthday was Oct. 2, made it practical: “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”

Jesus Christ, preaching the Sermon on the Mount, came up with a quotable quote: “Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.”

And with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure, which plays ironically off Matthew’s Gospel, Great Lakes Theater Festival brings the timelessness of this wisdom to our 21st-century age of intrusive surveillance, torture and secret prisons.

Angelo, appointed as ruler of Vienna while the Duke takes a sabbatical, is quick to condemn to death Claudio, guilty of nothing more than making his fiancée pregnant before the vows are spoken.

Meanwhile, however, Angelo commits his own sexual misdeed: He tells Claudio’s sister he’ll commute the sentence if she’ll sleep with him. He thinks his superior position will keep him safe, but all comes out in the end.

Shakespeare explores many themes here – secular, sexual and ecclesiastical – including the order of society, the rule of law, flexibility in government and the relative seriousness of sins.

But chief among them appears to be a reiteration of Christ’s sermon; and if the title’s reference isn’t enough evidence, consider that the Duke disguises himself as a friar in order to ascertain what Angelo’s up to.

At Great Lakes, where the play opened last weekend and runs in repertory with Arsenic and Old Lace, director Risa Brainin (along with her worthy designers) does her usual high-tech update job, adding Beltway suits, cell phones, spy cameras and barbed wire.

But Brainin doesn’t let her message-underlining keep the play from flowing, nor does she shirk on the comedy. And it is a comedy, if a complex and unsettling one, because it ends happily, order restored, wrongs righted and everybody married. OK, well, relatively happily.

Brainin is somewhat restricted by GLTF producing artistic director Charles Fee’s ideas about keeping an acting ensemble and his allegiances.

Kathryn Cherasaro, for instance, is a lovely actress, but for the second time in Great Lakes’ fall repertory, she’s being asked to play an ingénue role, that of Isabella, for which she has just a little too much maturity.

Richard Klautsch imbues the Duke with an air of resigned despair, which sometimes comes off as bland. Andrew May fares well as Angelo, searching his soul even as he’s sinning. Aled Davies does even better with less as the businesslike Escalus, the Duke’s assistant.

On the comic side, David Anthony Smith has a merry time as a smokin’, tokin’, jokin’ disco-dude named Lucio, a lecherous and inconstant fellow. M.A. Taylor takes a nice turn as Pompey, a pimp, as does Lynn Allison as the trailer-park madam Mistress Overdone. As a goofy Constable Elbow, Dougfred Miller proudly hauls ’em all in.

In one instance of inadvertent humor, Laura Perrotta shows up as Mariana, Angelo’s wronged ex-fiancée, wearing a pile of hair and wedding dress that make her a ringer for the Bride of Frankenstein. Maybe, in that instance, Angelo was doing the right thing to dump her.

But at a time when the leaders of some countries are instructing others on human rights while restricting them at home, Brainin’s production spells out, loud and clear, Shakespeare’s themes of forgiving as we would like to be forgiven, of practicing what we preach, and of judging not, lest we be judged.

And that’s the full measure of this Measure for Measure.

The Akron Beacon Journal
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Great Lakes Theater Festival stages Measure for Measure with Shakespearean delight
By Elaine Guregian, Beacon Journal arts and culture critic

Set to a percussive score that clangs like prison doors, the Great Lakes Theater Festival’s new production of Measure for Measure doesn’t take any chances of losing its audience.

For this present-day version of Shakespeare’s play, director Risa Brainin has the cast make many entrances hurrying up and down the aisles of Playhouse Square’s Ohio Theatre.

In this story of political corruption, most of the actors are dressed like somber attorneys, the others like their clients, in loud, disco-worthy clothing with gold chains. Cell phones ring during the play, erasing the line between real life and make-believe.

The actors speak their lines with deliberate, round-toned clarity, so we catch the intricacies of the language. Still surprise! they make the dialogue sound as natural as slang.

The cast performed this same production at the Idaho Shakespeare Festival over the summer, in the collaboration formed between the Boise company and the GLTF five years ago. Now, Great Lakes is doing Measure in repertory with Arsenic and Old Lace at Playhouse Square.

The Duke of Vienna (earnestly and engagingly played by Richard Klautsch) pretends to leave his city under the temporary watch of Angelo, his deputy. Watching through his eyes, the audience sees Angelo abuse his power. On paper, the goings-on are repellent, and yet this production finds comic moments some worked a little too hard, but nevertheless funny that provide distance and relief.

The play is one of Shakespeare’s more puzzling creations, but all of the aspects of the production, including the original score by Brad Carroll and costume designer Kim Krumm Sorenson’s attire, help communicate its odd mix of humor and drama. It’s to the credit of director and cast that we can accept Measure on its not-so-obvious terms.

The details of the plot work themselves out neatly under Brainin’s watch. Russell Metheny has designed huge black grids that are wheeled around to transform into jail cells (watched over by red-eyed security cameras) or government offices. They impose a menacing order.

Andrew May, who plays Arsenic’s drama critic, Mortimer Brewster, in Cary Grant mode, is unfortunately stuck a little in that stiffly aristocratic persona for his role as the conniving politician Angelo in Measure. Kathryn Cherasaro is marvelous as Isabella, sister of the imprisoned Claudio. Carrying herself upright, Cherasaro never lets you forget the serious side of the story, in which a young woman’s honor is matter-of-factly considered something to barter.

David Anthony Smith, who is a wild-eyed Teddy Roosevelt wannabe in Arsenic, is now a wild-eyed Lucio, a friend of Claudio and a lowlife who gleefully emphasizes double-entendres by thrusting his hips.

The last time GLTF performed Measure was in 1975, after the Watergate scandal. “They ought to show that in Washington every week,” someone sitting near me remarked at the end of this long (2¾-hour), engrossing and entertaining play.

Or not. It might just give the politicians ideas.

Cool Cleveland
October 10, 2007
Measure for Measure @ GLTF 10/6
Linda Eisenstein

Wow!: Director Risa Brainin has an uncanny knack for making Shakespeare ring with contemporary resonance. Her top-notch Measure for Measure is the best-produced drama at Great Lakes in recent memory. Prisoners in orange jumpsuits and black hoods are hauled away on dollies, surveillance cameras wink, politicians engage in endless photo ops, and Russell Metheny’s chilling set transforms into a jail cell in a blink of an eye. Yet despite the high drama, Brainin makes every second of the comedy work just as well. It’s a thrilling evening.

Superb cast: Tony Blair-look-alike Richard Klautsch shows gravitas as the depressed Duke who leaves his hard-ass hypocrite deputy Angelo (Andrew May) in charge of his kingdom. Kathryn Cherasaro has a knife-edge as the outraged nun Isabella, who is asked to bargain for her brother’s life with her virginity. David Anthony Smith steals every scene as a mullet-wearing party animal, as does M. A. Taylor as a pimp turned executioner.

Scene Magazine
October 10, 2007
Sex Police: The government wants control of your nasty bits in Measure for Measure
Christine Howey, Scene Magazine Theater Critic

Although we’re currently inundated with the scolds of self-appointed moralists and their never-ending battle with the vexing realities of human sexual urges, the sex police are hardly a new phenomenon. William Shakespeare knew all about them when he wrote Measure for Measure, a comical reflection on sexual hypocrisy and the disfiguring effects of power and corruption. In this slick production of the play, by the Great Lakes Theater Festival, there are a plethora of amusing scenes, and the staging is a feast for the eyes. But a couple performances fall short of capturing the full character development that could make this play soar.

This version is set in a “modern city,” the playing areas shaped by metal superstructures with semi-abstract images projected onto them. As designed by Russell Metheny, it is a coldly contemporary but undeniably fascinating place.

The Duke, as municipal head honcho, decides to skip town in order to discover why his city is going down the tubes, morality-wise. So he puts in charge tight-assed Angelo, a guy who is apparently so wedded to abstinence his shorts squeak. But the Duke secretly disguises himself as a friar and hangs around in order to observe how Angelo whips his burg back into shape.

True to his billing, Angelo arrests a young nobleman, Claudio, for knocking up his fiancée, Juliet (Laura Welsh), since there is a rule on the books against boffing before marriage. And the penalty for that indiscretion is death, which may seem a tad harsh to most people. One of those is Claudio’s sister Isabella, an intern nun, who begs Angelo to save her brother’s life. Little does she know that Angelo is turned on by hopeless pleading and seeks to deal with his blue-ball situation by trading Claudio’s life for a roll in the sack with this bride-to-be of Christ.

Obviously, things get complicated from that point, as the Duke/friar snoops around offering his advice and suggesting an identity switch to sabotage Angelo’s reign of repressive terror. As the Duke, Richard Klautsch is every inch a nobleman, and he has a deft sense of comic timing, especially when managing one of his many double takes. But at times, he falls into a rhythmic speech pattern that camouflages easy comprehension, pronouncing his words as if they were neatly separated by little plastic spacers. And his friar sounds much too similar to his Duke.

Andrew May successfully portrays Angelo’s struggles with his attraction to Isabella. But he seems unsure about how diabolical to make Angelo, so this centerpiece of evil feels a bit squishy. More on point is Kathryn Cherasaro, who makes Isabella believably pious and humble one minute, and fiercely unrelenting the next, denying her brother’s entreaty that she give up her virginity for his life.

In the somewhat thankless role of Claudio, Jeffrey C. Hawkins delivers Shakespeare’s crystalline meditation on mortality with admirable intensity: “The weariest and most loathed worldly life/That age, ache, penury, and imprisonment can lay on nature/Is a paradise to what we fear of death.” Also quietly effective is Aled Davies as the wise lord Escalus.

Much of the comic relief comes via Lucio, a local eccentric who is all id wrapped in a ’70s-looking leather jacket and topped with a mullet. Even though David Anthony Smith seems as though he’s acting in a different play half the time – or maybe an episode of Starsky & Hutch – his white Huggy Bear provides amusing counterpoint to some of the serious goings-on. And his stream of sexual metaphors (“He put a ducat in her clack dish,” “He filled a bottle with a funnel,” etc.) keeps the sexual theme front and center.

In smaller roles, Dougfred Miller is a stitch as Elbow, a constable so dim-witted he makes Barney Fife look like a Rhodes scholar. And he is frightfully menacing as the aptly named executioner Abhorson. Lynn Allison and M.A. Taylor add some comical moments as Mistress Overdone and her lackey Pompey.

Director Risa Brainin has a lot of fun with her contemporary setting, arming many characters with cell phones that are neatly integrated into this pre-digital script (although why no one had a “Brush Up Your Shakespeare” ringtone is mystifying).

Thanks to Michael Klaers’ layered lighting and some original scoring by Brad Carroll, this GLTF production has a fresh and invigorating look and feel. And that makes for a most satisfying theatrical evening, if not a transcendent one.

Photos: Arsenic and Old Lace

The elderly assassin Abby Brewster (actor Lynn Allison, right) reassures Reverend Dr. David Harper (actor Richard Klautsch, left) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
		Ignorance is bliss. An unsuspecting couple embraces (Andrew May as Mortimer, left and Katherine Cherasaro as Elaine, right) before chaos ensues in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
Say it isn’t so. The elderly assassin Abby Brewster (actor Lynn Allison, right) consoles her nephew Mortimer (Andrew May, left) after he discovers her scandalous secret in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
Martha (Laura Perrotta, right) and Abby (Lynn Allison, left) Brewster, a dangerous dynamic duo with a chilling sense of charity, offer an unsuspecting Mr. Gibbs (Dudley Swetland, center) a tempting, tannic toxin in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
A pair of unlikely assassins (actors Lynn Allison as Abby, left and Laura Perrotta, center) listen to the logic of their nephew (Andrew May as Mortimer) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
		M.A Taylor (as Dr. Einstein, left) and Dougfred Miller (as Jonathan Brewster, right) headline an outrageously eclectic supporting cast in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
Actors Laura Perrotta (as Martha Brewster, left) David Anthony Smith (as Teddy Brewster, center) and Lynn Allison (as Abby Brewster, right) take center stage in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
Jeffrey C. Hawkins (as Officer O’Hara, left) and Andrew May (as Mortimer Brewster, right) make a perfectly peculiar pair in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
		Meet Martha (actor Laura Perrotta, left) and Abby (actor Lynn Allison, right), a dangerous dynamic duo with a chilling sense of “charity” in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni
Martha (Laura Perrotta, right) and Abby (Lynn Allison, left) Brewster, a dangerous dynamic duo with a chilling sense of charity, offer an unsuspecting Mr. Witherspoon (Aled Davies, center) a tempting, tannic toxin in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of Joseph Kesselring’s madcap masterpiece Arsenic and Old Lace to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with William Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. Photography by Roger Mastroianni

Photos: Measure for Measure

Resident acting company members Lynn Allison (as Varria, left), Aled Davies (as Escalus, center) and Richard Klautsch (as the Duke of Vienna, right) take center stage in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
Law and lust collide in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure. Pictured here is veteran Festival acting company members Jeffrey C. Hawkins (as Claudio) and Laura Welsh (as Juliet) locked in a heartfelt embrace. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)		Festival favorite Andrew May takes center stage as the zealous ruler Angelo in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
Resident acting company members Aled Davies (as Escalus, left) and M.A. Taylor (as Pompey, right) take center stage in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
The pious Isabella (actor Kathryn Cherasaro, right) is forced to make an impossible decision between her brother and her god when confronted by the zealous Angelo (actor Andrew May, left) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
The pious Isabella (actor Kathryn Cherasaro, right) is forced to make an impossible decision between her brother and her god when confronted by a zealous Angelo (actor Andrew May, left) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
		Festival favorite Laura Perrotta portrays the determined heroine Marinna in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
The Duke of Vienna (actor Richard Klautsch) takes center stage in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
The zealously moral ruler Angelo (actor Andrew May left) finds himself at the mercy of his own desire amidst his most trusted cabinet members Varria (actor Lynn Allison, center) and Escalus (actor Aled Davies) in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)
Law and lust collide when the Duke of Vienna (actor Richard Klautsch, left) takes an abrupt leave of absence and places the strict Angelo (actor Andrew May center) in charge as Isabella (actor Kathryn Cherasaro, back left) and Mariana (actor Laura Perrotta, back right) look on in Great Lakes Theater Festival’s production of William Shakespeare’s political thriller Measure for Measure to open the classic theater company’s 46th season. The production runs in rotating repertory with Joseph Kesselring’s classic American comedy Arsenic and Old Lace at the Ohio Theatre, Playhouse Square through October 21. (Photography by Roger Mastroianni)