`OLD LACE' A FIRST-RATE FARCE AT STAGE DOOR THEATER : THE FACTS.

Byline: Victoria Giraud Special to the Daily News

``Arsenic and Old Lace,'' a classic comedy presented countless times over the past half-century and made into a 1944 Frank Capra movie starring Cary Grant, is unflagging, madcap entertainment as presented at the Stage Door Theater.

The Brewster family of Brooklyn is a bit on the zany side - to say the least. Teddy (riotously played by Tom Puckett), thinks he's Teddy Roosevelt. He races around the stage, carrying a trumpet and yelling ``Charge!''

Sweet-old-lady aunts Abby (the irrepressibly droll Nancy Barker) and Martha (an irresistible Susan Michael) have made murder a charitable enterprise - lovingly helping lonely old men to their demise with a mixture of arsenic, strychnine, cyanide and elderberry wine. Teddy buries these ``yellow fever victims'' in the basement, where he's building locks for the Panama Canal.

Mortimer, a journalist-turned-drama critic (played with appealing dash and excellent comic timing by Anthony Liveri), is the sane but naive nephew, who wonders if he has truly lost his mind when he accidentally discovers a body in his aunts' window box. His plans to marry the lovely Elaine (a stylish performance by Allison Barrie) suddenly seems implausible.

When his aunts readily admit their culpability - after all, they bury their victims with the appropriate religious funeral - his mind churns with the possibilities of getting his aunts to stop, and blaming the mess on Teddy.

Naturally, complications arise. Long-lost, criminally minded brother Jonathan (a delightfully diabolical Mark Brush) unexpectedly shows up looking like Boris Karloff, accompanied by his own quack plastic surgeon, Dr. Einstein (hilariously played by Brian Bookbinder). They've got a body of their own to bury, and plan to take over the Brewster home for their own devilish schemes.

Add to this list of nutty characters the bumbling but good-natured Officer O'Hara (the appealing Mike Pratt) who wants to be a playwright; the Rev. Dr. Harper, an ultraconservative minister (an affable Hal Conley, who also portrays Mr. Witherspoon), and two rather inept policemen (Mike Monteleone and John Barker).

This first-rate farce, ably directed by Wayne Tolbert, twists and turns to a wild and crazy ending of just rewards. The indomitable aunts, however, won't be swayed from their charitable pursuits, and at the end they are once again tempting fate.

WHAT: ``Arsenic and Old Lace'' by Joseph Kesselring.

WHEN: 8 p.m. Thursdays and 8:30 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, through Dec. 7. Also 2 p.m. Nov. 17 and Dec. 1.

WHERE: Stage Door Theater, 28311 Agoura Road, Agoura.

COST: $9; $11 on Saturday; $14 Thursday dinner and show.

INFORMATION: [phone].