I throw out this idea to you young composers out there. Could you make a musical out of the old play Arsenic and Old Lace? You can have Bette Midler and Bernadette Peters as the old aunts and Nathan Lane as their brother Teddy. I think it would be a hit.
Richard Rodgers attempted it as a vehicle for Merman and Martin but couldn’t make it work. I’m not exactly sure where the play “sings.” It requires such a specific pace for the style of comedy that rewriting it as a musical seems like a great way to suck the air right out of it. However a first rate revival of it, perhaps directed by Jerry Zaks, could be super fun
Oh, how I tried to get Jerry Herman interested in this for Lansbury, Channing and Eric Mc Cormack as Mortimer. We talked about making Mortimer a dance critic who secretly wished he was a dancing star on Broadway-- therefore opening up the plot for at least one fantasy sequence. We got so far as naming the project ELDERBERRY WINE! but Jerry wasn't totally sold in the project.