NEW YORK—Offering some gentle life lessons, a bit of romance, and a whole lot of fun, “You Can’t Take It With You,” the 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, makes a triumphant return to Broadway.
The world is full of eccentric families, but the one at the New York home of Martin Vanderhof (James Earl Jones), comprised of three generations, is in a class by itself.
Martin is the patriarch of the clan, a man who abruptly quit his job 35 years earlier, preferring instead to take the time to enjoy life.
His daughter, Penelope (Kristine Nielsen), has spent the last eight years writing plays (“The Sex Play,” “The War Play,” and so on). Her husband, Paul (Mark Linn-Baker), makes fireworks in the basement with the help of Mr. DePinna (Patrick Kerr), a fellow who dropped by several years ago and ended up staying.
Penny’s daughter, Essie (Annaleigh Ashford), continually practices dance routines while running a candy business out of the house. Essie’s husband, Ed (Will Brill), offers his wife musical accompaniment on the xylophone and reprints sentences by Trotsky.
Others dropping by include Boris Kolenkhov (Reg Rogers), a Russian expatriate and Essie’s dance teacher; and the former Grand Duchess Olga (Elizabeth Ashley), who now works in a restaurant in Times Square.
A sharp contrast to this colorful entourage is Alice (Rose Byrne), Penelope’s somewhat conservative daughter. She works as a secretary on Wall Street where she’s fallen in love with Tony Kirby (Fran Kranz), the boss’s son.
When things start to get serious between them, Tony wants to bring his parents over to meet her family, a prospect that fills Alice with dread. It’s not that Alice doesn’t love her family, she'd just prefer Tony’s parents get to know them in very small doses.
When said gathering doesn’t work out—for reasons which include a drunken actress (Julie Halston), a box of snakes, a jar of pig’s feet, and Mr. DePinna clad in a toga—it looks like any chance Alice and Tony have for happiness is gone. Gone, that is, unless certain people can be made to see otherwise.
