UNTIL MARCH 5 2005, BATH: This classic black comedy requires total suspension of disbelief then it's a romp.

Set in Brooklyn in the early 1940s it concerns the nefarious activities of two elderly spinster sisters, Abby and Martha Brewster, sweet, kindly souls whose mission in life is to end the misery of lonely men who come to their house in search of lodgings.

Home-made elderberry wine laced with a cocktail of poisons including the arsenic of the title sends them rapidly and painlessly to their maker and a nicely tended grave in the cellar, dug by their completely batty nephew Teddy, who thinks he's President Roosevelt and is digging the Panama canal.

Teddy's brother Mortimer Brewster, a New York theatre critic a profession thought rather disreputable by his aunts stumbles across the awful truth on one of his frequent visits to his relatives, and the girl next door, minister's daughter Elaine.

Angela Thorne and Brigit Forsyth are superb as the two devout sisters, unable to comprehend that what they are doing is in any way wrong, and while one is suspending disbelief it is very hard to find the flaw in their logic, so sweetly reasonable are they.

Andrew Havill as Mortimer, aghast when he realises the truth about his aunts, peaks a little early in the hysteria department and leaves himself nowhere to go as the going gets rougher.

Mark Heenehan is endearing in a bull-in-a-china shop way as the barmy but harmless Teddy.

Enter a third Brewster, the mad, bad Jonathan, on the run from an asylum for the criminally insane, with his sidekick, a doctor from your worst nightmares, and yet another corpse.

Huw Higginson is truly menacing as the evil brother whose face has been changed so often by his friend Dr Einstein that he looks l ike Boris Karloff.

Sylvester McCoy, of Dr Who fame, gives a brilliant reprise of Peter Lorre's performance as the doctor in the Hollywood version of the comedy, cringing, high voiced, amoral and dangerous because he follows the bidding of the seriously murderous Jonathan. It's a consumate comedy performance.

The role of Elaine is a slightly thankless one but Reanne Farley makes her presence count.

The bizarre Brewster family history as it unravels, all adds colour to the background against which a preposterous plot is set.

The script is brilliantly witty with some great cracks about theatre critics.

It's a briskly paced production which almost papers over some unevenness in the casting. Some of the minor roles were played as makeweights, which might be partly the fault of the script where understandably all the best lines go to the principals.

It runs until Saturday.

Jo Bayne

Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring

Theatre Royal Bath