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YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU

Produced by Norma Leichtweis
Directed by Victoria Martinez

2:00 Matinee
Sunday, July 21

6:30 Dinner Theatre
Saturday, July 13
Subject to change or cancellation.

| Production Notes | Cast Bios | Production Staff | Special Thanks |

A fabulous farce from those masters of comedy, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, You Can't Take It With You, a 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning play, is a wacky paean to nonconformity. The comedy is over the top but the moral of the story is a serious one: Find in yourself the courage to do with your life what you really want to do.

Martin Vanderhof - aka Grandpa - reigns over a delightful madhouse full of his wife, children and grandchildren and their spouses, and folks who came for a visit and never left. All are artists, writers, and inventors, and none of them have let a lack of talent interfere with having a good time. That's fine with Grandpa: He opted out of rat race years ago because it was no fun. Today, he "doesn't believe in income tax" and allows fireworks experiments to go on the basement.

Into the circus atmosphere of the Vanderhof household comes Tony Kirby, wooing Grandpa's granddaughter Alice Sycamore. Tony is a bit dismayed by this family of bohemians in which "everybody does just as he pleases," though he later admits that he gave up his dream for "reality" when he was pressured into joining the family banking business, and he comes to realize that most people are "afraid to live" their dreams. When the romance draws Tony's parents in meet their son's intended, the stuffed-shirt Kirby Sr. and the snobby Mrs. Kirby inevitably get a dressing down that's as humorous as it is well deserved.

In the records of the American theatre, the Kaufman and Hart collaboration lasted only ten years, from 1930 to 1940. This, however, seems hard to believe. The popularity of their plays was so tremendous during their partnership and their plays have continued to be so popular ever since, that they seem, in the perspective of the present day, to have been “always there” - like Gilbert and Sullivan or Rodgers and Hammerstein.