The macabre 1962 yarn presented Charles and Merricat as cousins at cross purposes, jockeying around for the family fortune in a rambling Victorian mansion in Vermont. Complicating their conflict further is another Blackwood sister, Constance, who may or may not have wilted their family tree by sprinkling some arsenic-laced sugar on the blackberries of her father, mother, brother and aunt.

Joy Franz is also featured in the show world-premiering at Yale Rep in September.

Adam Bock, who copped two Outstanding Off-Broadway Play nominations from the Outer Critics Circle in 2007-08 (The Receptionist and The Drunken City), did the book, and the songs (music and lyrics) are by Todd Almond, recently represented Off-Broadway with On the Levee at The Duke on 42nd.

Anne Kaufman, who won an Obie for helming Bock’s The Thugs and more recently delivered Stunning and This Wide Night, will direct.

A nonmusical version of We Have Always Lived in the Castle by Hugh Wheeler, book writer of Sweeney Todd and A Little Night Music, ran nine performances at the Barrymore in 1966. David Merrick produced, and Garson Kanin directed. The cast included Shirley Knight, Phillip Clark and Heather Menzies.

— Harry Haun