It’s nothing short of amazing that Broadway’s newest star-filled hit won a Pulitzer prize in 1937. “You Can’t Take It with You” by the unbeatable team of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman first opened in 1936. The play was turned into film, starring James Stewart, Jean Arthur and Lionel Barrymore and won the Academy Award in 1939.
But this old chestnut, beloved of high school drama clubs, is fresh and funny. It opened to raves at the Longacre Theater on September 28 and stars James Earl Jones, the lovely and delicate Rose Byrne, Annaleigh Ashford, Byron Jennings, Mark Linn Baker, Elizabeth Ashley and many others.
You Can’t Take it With You introduces audiences to the freethinking Sycamore family and the mayhem that ensues when their daughter’s fiancé brings his conservative, straight-laced parents to dinner on the wrong night. The Sycamore/Vanderhof/Carmichael family is arguably the wackiest ever to grace Broadway. There is nutty Essie, a candy maker who wants to be a ballerina, the mother, Penelope Sycamore, played by Kristine Nielsen, who writes plays that go nowhere, the father, who makes fireworks in the basement, and a Russian royal, played to the hilt by Elizabeth Ashley. who arrives in time to make a huge stack of blintzes. With its seemingly endless arrivals and departures of G-Men and Russians, Park Avenue aristocrats and pyrotechnic explosions, this revival is a sheer delight from beginning to end.

(photo credit: Joan Marcus.)

Comments are closed.