‘You Can’t Take It With You’: A Farcical Family Affair

SAGA OF THE SYCAMORE FAMILY TREE: (left to right) Annaleigh Ashford, Reg Rogers, Elizabeth Ashley, Kristine Nielsen, Mark Linn-Baker, James Earl Jones & Patrick Kerr. Photo: Joan Marcus

YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU
Written by Moss Hart & George S. Kaufman
Directed by Scott Ellis
Through February 22, 2015
Longacre Theatre
220 West 48th Street
(212-239-6200), www.YouCantTakeItWithYouBroadway.com

By David NouNou

Eccentric, quirky and zany characters in funny comedies are hard to come by these days, but a brilliant revival of the 1936 Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman comedy has just arrived and is setting off fireworks both figuratively and literally. Sure, the plot line is a bit over the top by today’s standards, but who cares when you are in the company of such expert comedic actors? You are here to laugh, have a good time and enjoy the foibles of people who enjoy their life by doing nothing but enjoying life, themselves and each other. It was an elixir to make people laugh for the depression era and it is still a tonic to be enjoyed in our troubled times.

Grandpa Vanderhof (James Earl Jones), head of the household, hasn’t paid his taxes in 24 years and doesn’t feel he should for the government isn’t good at handling money. Penny Sycamore (Kristine Nielson), his daughter, sits and writes ludicrous plays all day long because a typewriter was delivered to her address by mistake eight years prior and she took up playwriting. Penny is married to Paul Sycamore (Mark Linn-Baker); he creates fireworks and explosives for the 4^th of July weekends with his house guest, Mr. DePinna (Patrick Kerr) who moved in eight years earlier.

The Sycamores have two daughters: daffy Essie (Annaleigh Ashford), equally wonderful here as she was in Kinky Boots, makes candy all day called “Love Dreams,” and does all her movements through the art of ballet. She has been training deplorably for eight years to be a ballerina and is married to Ed (Will Brill), her marimba-playing musician husband. The only sane person in this loony bin is the lovely Alice (Rose Byrne). She knows her family is nuts, but she loves them through thick and thin.

Alice is also in love with Tony Kirby (Fran Kranz), who is straitlaced upper crust. She feels her family is way too eccentric to be accepted by his uptight parents: Mr. Kirby Sr. (Byron Jennings), who owns the company she works in, and Mrs. Kirby (Johanna Day). Throw in with this zany bunch Boris Kolenkhov (Reg Rogers), Essie’s boorish revolutionary ballet instructor who has been there for dinner for the last eight years. Gay Wellington (Julie Halston), an alcoholic actress who is auditioning for one of Penny’s plays, but has passed out before the play started; and the ever enchanting Elizabeth Ashley as the Grand Duchess Olga, cousin to the Czar of Russia, who is now working as a waitress at Childs Restaurant (famous chain in the 1930s). This is her day off and since she is an expert blintz maker, it takes her no time to whip up a batch of blintzes for the entire household. Throw in the IRS, G-Men, the police, a couple of kittens, some background snakes, a dinner party set on the wrong date that goes horribly wrong and you’ve got an evening of nonstop revelry.

This revelry is paced by the ever-competent director, Scott Ellis. He has a knack for the madness that ensues and has fine-tuned all his actors to be up to par for the occasion. Kudos should also be given to David Rockwell’s excellent revolving set of the seedy Sycamore home.

When you have the opportunity to spend some time with James Earl Jones, Annaleigh Ashford, Elizabeth Ashley, Rose Byrne, Kristine Nielson, Reg Rogers, Mark Linn-Baker, Patrick Karr, Byron Jennings and Johanna Day, how can you go wrong? None of us will probably ever be invited to the Sycamore household and maybe it’s just as well, but it was a hell of a night watching all their mirth and shenanigans.

GRANDPA KNOWS BEST: Rose Byrne & James Earl Jones. Photo: Joan Marcus

ECCENTRIC KINFOLK: Kristine Nielsen & James Earl Jones. Photo: Joan Marcus

MADCAP MOMENT: (left to right) Byron Jennings, Johanna Day, Fran Kranz & James Earl Jones in ‘You Can’t Take It With You.’ Photo: Joan Marcus

Edited by Scott Harrah
Published October 3, 2014
Reviewed at press performance on October 2, 2014