PROVIDENCE — Idiosyncratic cartoonists Charles Addams and Gahan Wilson mastered the art of macabre comedy — the mixing of grim or disturbing topics with humor — in a single panel. A prototypical example of Wilson’s work, which appeared in Playboy in 1964, showed a bearded skeleton in a Santa Claus suit lying crumpled in a fireplace. “Well,” a worker tells a wide-eyed homeowner in the caption, “we found out what’s been clogging your chimney since last December.”
On film (Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things”) and television (Netflix’s “Wednesday”), macabre comedies — with their dark yet farcical plots, fast-paced dialogue with deadpan delivery, absurd twists and turns, and oddly eccentric characters — have proven to have universal appeal.
On stage, some have become classics.
Most of us are familiar with American playwright Joseph Kesselring’s “Arsenic and Old Lace,” a 1930s master work that enjoyed long runs on Broadway and in London, and is a staple at community theaters. It revolves around the Brewster family, where Mortimer discovers that his sweet, elderly aunts have a bizarre habit of poisoning lonely old men with elderberry wine and burying them in the cellar.
Currently on stage at Teatro ECAS is Juan José Alonso Millán’s similarly themed “El Cianuro… ¿solo o con leche?” (“Cyanide... straight or with milk?”), which premiered in Madrid in 1963 and is highly regarded as a cornerstone of post-Spanish Civil War satirical theater. It is being performed in Spanish, with English supertitles, under the direction of Francis Parra, who also helmed its 2019 production.
The play takes place in a large house in Badajoz, Spain in 1925, in which Laura (Juana Diaz) and her wheelchair-bound mother Adela (Sylvia Bernal) are considering ending the life of the family’s near-death but not-near-enough 92-year-old patriarch, Don Gregorio (Eleazar Parra).
Their perfectly organized plan to lace his coffee with poison derails when a relative, the dubious Enrique (Lender Maldonado), and his blissfully unaware fiancée, Marta (Lauren Farnell), arrive unexpectedly. Complicating matters further are Laura’s seemingly dim niece/incompetent accomplice, Justina (Moy Arburola), her hustler husband, Llermo (Carlos Parra), nosy neighbors Socorro (also Francis Parra) and Veneranda (Jahaira Suarez), and Veneranda’s son and bumbling wannabe detective, Marcial (Juan Carlos Parra). There is also a creepy interloper (Franklin Solano) roaming the neighborhood.
In short, a quiet family killing turns into a chaotic and darkly comedic mess of shifting alliances, double-crossing, mistaken identity, and revenge. Unfortunately, this production lacks the fortitude to devise the requisite chaos and the wherewithal to generate the intended darkness and comedy.
A play like this requires that productions master the inverse relationship between tragic stakes and comedic voice. And performances need to treat devastatingly serious situations with absolute emotional honesty and an absurd, deadpan, or highly stylized delivery to facilitate the things that are funny.
Naghil Parra’s lighting/sound design and Eleazar Parra’s scenic design are merely functional and don’t particularly lend themselves to humor, build much-needed suspense, or sustain a sense of the macabre. Nothing mounted on stage says “dark comedy.”
Also, director Parra is unable to elicit either a tragic or comedic response from many of her players who, instead, have opted for blasé. For a few, blasé would be a stretch.
Exceptions are the wonderfully dreary Arburola as the niece and the effervescent Farnell as the fiancée, who are consistently true to their characters and clever in everything they do. Suarez and Francis Parra as the nosy neighbors are adorable and the brief scene with Solano as the creepy interloper serves up much needed comic relief. Eleazar Parra as the elderly and dying Don Gregorio is also a delight, though the actor’s young age undermines his comedic moments.
Collectively, the pieces and parts of this production merely flirt with the play’s dark comedy and the one act’s two-hour running time seems longer as a result.
Legend has it that when Golden Age of Cinema screenwriter George Seaton visited old-time character actor Edmund Gwenn as he lay on his deathbed, he said, “This must be terribly difficult for you.” Gwenn reportedly replied, “Dying is easy, comedy is hard.” This production of Millán’s “El Cianuro… ¿solo o con leche?” suggests that a comedy about patricide is even harder.
EL CIANURO… ¿SOLO O CON LECHE?
Written by Juan José Alonso Millán. Directed by Francis Parra. At Teatro ECAS, 679 Valley St., Providence. Through July 19. Tickets $40-$57.50, fees included. 401-421-3227, teatroecas.org
Bob Abelman is an award-winning theater critic who formerly wrote for the Austin Chronicle. Connect with him on Facebook.