You Can't Take it with You

A sort of IRS inspector named Henderson drops in to tell Grandpa that since he hasn’t paid income tax for decades, he owes the government a fortune. A drunken actress, Gay Wellington, comes to read for Penelope’s play and passes out. Boris, the Russian refugee, comes to teach Essie ballet lessons (despite “no improvement” in 8 years) and sponge off the family. Tony Kirby comes to court Alice and gets his stuffed-shirt father and neurotic mother and himself invited to dinner. Then the Kirbys, elegantly dressed, arrive a day early, encounter Essie dancing, Ed playing xylophone, Penelope painting a portrait of Mr. De Pinna half undressed, the drunken actress, the snake, and Boris who wrestles with Mr. Kirby and hurts him. And finally when they start a disastrous dinner, explosions begin in the basement, the lights go out, and G-Men arrive and arrest all of them for plotting a revolution. Apparently, there were printed warnings in the candy boxes Ed left all over town.

So Act III has nowhere to go but up, and up it goes with the arrival of former Grand Duchess Olga, now a waitress in a New York restaurant, whom Boris has invited to dinner and has cooked blintzes for all. Believe it or not, it gets sillier from there.

This is a handsome show that takes good advantage of Geva’s large stage. Bill Clarke’s impressively well-designed set offers a big, open, well-worn house, intricately detailed, with perfectly gauged playing areas. Pamela Scofield’s rich, varied period costumes offer realistic and comic insights into this circus of characters. And Ann Wrighton’s handsome, subtle lighting highlights these designs and supports Cuddy’s direction.

The cast seems to be having fun. Brigitt Markusfeld’s Penelope holds the performance together with commanding warmth and delicious physical comedy. She can do more just ascending a flight of stairs than most clowns working at slapstick. Her husband Skip Greer, makes Penelope’s husband Paul a funny, lovable man everyone would like to have around the house.

Melissa Rain Anderson can’t really do pointe-work, but her overly plump, naïve would-be-ballerina in tutu and pointe shoes, Essie, is an adorable character and a howl in her stressful dancing.

Anderson’s husband, Jim Poulos, makes Ed a likably dopey go-for, and plays the xylophone very well. Nora Cole makes more character of the maid Rheba than the script does, and Kim Sullivan’s Donald gets laughs just by exaggerating his trying to run fast in panic.

Robert Rutland and Peggy Cosgrave, two of my favorite character actors, are all one could ask for as Mr. and Mrs. Kirby, though it is a pity that she has such a small role in this play. Rutland is also unrecognizable and dryly effective as the IRS man Henderson in Act I.

In two smaller roles, Davida Bloom is truly comic in the basically silly role of the drunken Gay Wellington; and Patricia Hodges makes Grand Duchess Olga a tall elegant cartoon with human touches.

I’m pleased to say that the 1936 original-cast Alice was a friend, whom we lost only last year in her nineties. Even in her seventies, Margot Stevenson was still an ingénue – beautiful and radiating an innocent sweetness that enlivened and sometimes even conflicted with her portrayals of some of the meaner characters she played onstage, memorably in two Geva productions. Unfortunately, that is exactly the needed quality that Nicole Rodenburg’s Alice lacks. Pretty, articulate, and moving well, she seemed – I hope on opening night only – to be going through Alice’s role without much genuine involvement. I thought Loren Dunn’s Tony Kirby equally pallid in Act I, but he seemed to be deliberately pacing the character to grow, so that by the end of the play Tony was a very appealing young swain indeed.

Dick St. George’s high energy and forceful delivery could well have been imitated by some others in the cast, who were occasionally inaudible. But his Russian accent as Boris was too little in evidence and too terrible when it showed up to seem to be a deliberate attempt at comedy. Boris is potentially a scene-stealing role.

The “star role” hasn’t the main action in this play. But his ethos dominates the tone, the wildly varied action, and the thematic content of the play. Grandpa is a fanciful but seriously intended response to hard times: he walks away from Wall Street and wishes it well but wants it to leave him alone. Robert Vaughn is charming and clear about what makes this rogue individualist a father-figure for these wacky characters. I’d have liked a bit more forceful delivery from Vaughn, and more command. But he doesn’t fade into the woodwork, by any means, and he’s a supportive and gracious lead actor.

All in all, this is a pleasant evening of theater. But it could be a more exciting one.