Westborough Players' Club Show Has Unusual Twist

During a Westborough Players’ Club rehearsal of “Arsenic and Old Lace” last week, Beverly Bourgeois and Elizabeth Horman were on stage together and “she said one of my lines and I said one of her lines,” according to Bourgeois.

Bourgeois plays Abby Brewster, and Horman plays sister Martha Brewster.

The actresses have played each other’s roles in other productions of the play – an unexpected twist to this weekend’s shows.

“As long as we don't get ourselves mixed up,” everything should be fine, Bourgeois said during another rehearsal last week.

“Abby and Martha almost end each other's sentences."

The Westborough Players’ Club’s performances of the Joseph Kesselring play are at 7:30 p.m. Friday and Saturday, and 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, at St. Stephen's Episcopal Church, 3 John St.

Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for seniors and students. To reserve tickets, email tickets@westboroughplayers.com or call 508-475-9725. 

"It was written over 70 years ago, and it's still very funny,” director Joel Hersh said.

"It's not something that gets done a lot. As a community theater, we try to create opportunities for a variety of people from the all the surrounding towns, people with different skill levels. This is a show with a lot of men in the cast. It's an opportunity to give smaller roles to people with less experience and have them partake also -- and learn as part of the process."

The show includes 13 cast members, Hersh said.

Mark Dittelman, who plays nephew Mortimer Brewster, said he auditioned for the show because “I really just thought it could be done in such a way where it had a lot of elements of comedy and slapstick. And that's a lot of the things that I do."

"He's kind of an average guy,” Dittelman said of Mortimer. “But when he's thrown into these strage situations that happen over the course of the play, he gets very frazzled. He doesn't know how to handle it."