Arsenic and Old Lace is a play by American playwright Joseph Kesselring, written in 1939. The play opened on Broadway at the Fulton Theatre on January 10, 1941. After moving to the Hudson Theatre in 1943, it closed there on June 17, 1944, having played 1,444 performances. According to the opening night review in The New York Times, the play was "so funny that none of us will ever forget it."

This was the inaugural performance of the Penn’s Village Players, “not a play reading group…not live theater. A virtual production without sets, with ad-hoc costumes, performed from our living rooms!”