82. YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU
What can a Johnny-come-lately reviewer add to the cacophony
of praise being showered on the new Broadway revival of YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH
YOU, at the Longacre Theatre? Unless he has a totally different take,
he can add very little, and, in this case, he doesn’t. The show, apart from the usual
unimportant quibbles, is every bit as delightful as most critics say. So
instead of rehashing those opinions, I’m offering, for the most part, a revision of what
I wrote about the play in my book The
Encyclopedia of the New York Stage, 1930-1940 about the 1936 production. At the end are a few personal reactions to the current production. The original show ran 837 performances at the Booth
Theatre, won the Pulitzer Prize for 1936-1937, and was one of the 10 Best Plays
of the Year.
For a memorable photo of the entire original company, with Kaufman and Hart
standing proudly up center, click here.
YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU, by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart (the program actually credits them in the reverse order), one of the
all-time popular Broadway comedy hits—which has been given countless
productions in amateur and professional theaters over the years—has had three
(or four, depending on how you’re counting) previous Broadway revivals. In 1945
it had a very short run in a slapdash production at the City Center, starring
ex-vaudevillian Fred Stone as Grandpa Vanderhof; in 1965 the APA Repertory
Theatre did a fine production at the Lyceum, with Donald Moffat as Grandpa and
Rosemary Harris as Alice; in 1967, the company returned to the Lyceum with the
same basic production; and in 1983, Jason Robards as Grandpa Vanderhof led a
terrific cast in a revival that tallied 312 performances at the Plymouth and
Royale Theatres.
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| From left: James Earl Jones, Kristine Nielsen, Fran Kranz, Will Brill, Annaleigh Ashford, Patrick Kerr, Mark Linn-Baker. Photo: Joan Marcus. |
What Kaufman and Hart contrived was a zany but heartwarming
farce about a wildly unconventional family who live in the shadow of Columbia
University. There’s the crustily individualistic, snake- and stamp-collecting
Grandpa Martin Vanderhof (James Earl Jones), who retired 35 years earlier, gets
much pleasure from attending Columbia’s commencement exercises, and refuses to
pay income tax; his crackpot amateur-painter daughter, Penelope (Kristine
Nielsen), who started to write plays (unproduced) when a typewriter was
accidentally delivered to the house eight years earlier, and who asks the
dipsomaniacal actress Gay Wellington (Julie Halston) to help get her scripts in
shape; Penny’s husband, Paul Sycamore (Mark Linn-Baker), who manufactures
firecrackers in the basement, aided by a onetime iceman, Mr. De Pinna (Patrick
Kerr), who long ago attached himself to the household; candy-making,
29-year-old daughter Essy Sycamore (Annaleigh Ashford), who’s practicing ballet
dancing under the tutelage of an emotional Russian, Boris Kolenkhov (Reg Rogers),
and who performs to the xylophone playing of her screwy husband Ed (Will Brill),
who prints radical statements; pretty daughter Alice (Rose Byrne), straighter
than the rest, a bit embarrassed by her family’s oddities, and in love with
Tony, the son of her Wall Street boss; and black domestic, Rheba (Crystal
Dickinson), and her welfare-receiving boyfriend, Donald (Marc Damon Johnson).
Much
of the action involves the contretemps that arise
when Tony’s socially conscious parents arrive at the house (there’s supposedly
been a mix-up in arrangements and they confront the ménage at its most
outrageous). Ed’s inflammatory tracts and the discovery of the gunpowder in the
basement result in everyone’s being arrested by three government agents (Nick
Corley, Austin Durant, and Joe Tapper), and Alice’s decision to break off her
engagement. Grandpa, however, steps in and applies his homely wisdom to
straighten matters out, and everyone settles down happily to a meal of blintzes
cooked by Olga (Elizabeth Ashley), a former Russian aristocrat working at the Child’s
Restaurant in Times Square.
The play was completed in only a month, and went
through titles such as GRANDPA’S OTHER SNAKE, MONEY IN THE BANK, FOXY GRANDPA,
and THE KING IS NAKED before the authors came up with its perfect name. When it
was awarded the Pulitzer, a few critics grumbled because they felt the piece,
for all its humor and charm, was too obviously a commercial work without
serious social import. The critics loved the play’s affectionately drawn
eccentrics, its risible incongruities, its avoidance of superficial wisecracks,
and its marvelous cast. Weaknesses cited included lack of social significance (its
theme of the evanescence of material wealth was not much thought of) and its
flimsy story.
As you watch this old chestnut unfold, you may wonder during
the early parts of Act one (there are three) where all the hype comes from about how funny it is. There are some rib-tickling moments in this act but much of the time we’re
busy learning who these folks are and about the essential conditions surrounding
them. Act two explodes in more ways than one, and gets funnier and funnier,
especially during a game that Penny initiates in which people write down the first
word that comes to mind when she says a word at random. The scene is comic
genius and I’m chuckling now as I recall it. Act three, while not without
plenty of hilarity, is mainly concerned with resolving what’s come before,
bringing everything back down to earth in a good-natured and emotionally
satisfying way.
Despite the play’s being so inextricably a part of the mid-Depression, it’s
amazing how well a splendidly staged and acted production of YOU CAN’T
TAKE IT WITH YOU can not only keep you in stitches 78 years after it was
first produced, but even induce tears of joy (yes, that actually happened to
me) with its sweetly sentimental, feel-good idealism.
Nearly everything here
works, starting with David Rockwell’s elaborate set, which replaces the curtain
with the dollhouse-like façade of the Vanderhof home. Squeezing it at either side
are imposing brick and mortar buildings that slide off when the action begins
so the house can revolve and display its elaborate interior, every nook and
cranny filled with the resident’s accumulated bric-a-brac. Broadway
tunesmith Jason Robert Brown has created a sensational background score that
captures the period tone and atmosphere, while Jane Greenwood
demonstrates with her mid-30s garments why she still reigns as the queen of
Broadway costume design. Jon Weston’s lighting, Donald Holder’s sound design,
Tom Watson’s wigs, and the special effects of Hudson Theatrical Effects (all
those firecrackers!) are all to be commended for what they contribute to this
hellzapoppin’ production.
Scott Ellis’s direction flawlessly sews together
an ensemble of comical maestros, each with their own eccentricities, but all
perfectly attuned to the play’s dramatic needs. I’ve already taken up too much
space and each of the actors has been praised to the sky by earlier reviews, so
rather than enumerate the individual actors, of which there are 19 (count ‘em),
let me say that they’re all joyously wonderful, and leave it at that. After you’ve seen this loving revival, you can take it with you in your memory for years to come.