Mountain Shakespeare Festival Blog

You Can’t Take It With You

June 27th, 2008

Hi all,

Also, this wonderful write up from Holly Van Houten on “You Can’t Take It With You.”

Before you read it, however, I would like to say that of all the plays I have had a hand in directing, perhaps 20 or so, I believe that the writing in this play truly ranks among the best. The characters are so vivid, so clear and so funny!

We were working on the big “J-Men” scene and roughly 18 actors end up o stage by the end, there is an explosion, singing drunk, hey, everything you could want and I realized that unlike most plays every single one of the 18 characters we quite distinct! Usually, when you have that many characters on stage at least half of them are “holding as spear” so to speak, they provide a very useful function to focus energy and attention, but rarely do all the characters on stage “cast a shadow.”

Remarkable.

Read on…

Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s “You Can’t Take it With You,” is a delightful combination of escapist comedy and thought-provoking commentary on issues relevant, not only to its own period (1930s America), but to every one in every age. The main focus of the play is the love affair of Alice and Tony, but in negotiating the stark differences between their families, the play manages to engage controversial political issues relevant during The Great Depression, such as FDR’s “New Deal” policies, free speech, the recent levying of an “income” tax, communism and the fall of Russian royalty. But, the play goes even further by delving into the broader philosophical notions of happiness and prosperity. The play, at its heart, makes an attempt to reconcile the tension between two competing versions of the American Dream. The Kirby family represents a version of the American Dream, which tells us that in America, if we work hard, we can gain wealth and prosperity. Anyone, regardless of class, can pull themselves up by their boot straps and achieve not just financial stability, but financial success. We see this portrayed not only in Mr. Kirby’s philosophy, but in the eager attempts of the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina and her family to get ahead in the New York department store workforce. On the other hand, Grandpa Vanderhoff and family represent that part of the American Dream that harkens back to the Declaration of Independence: the pursuit of happiness. According to Grandpa, to be happy, we must be independent: free to do what we like… and for Grandpa, that means playing darts, collecting snakes, attending random commencement addresses, but most of all enjoying his family and his time. During the Great Depression of the 1930s, both versions of the American Dream were coming under heavy questioning. Businesses were failing despite hard work and those who equated happiness with material wealth were desperately in need of Hart and Kaufman’s theatrical realignment of their priorities. The genius of this play is its ability to engage such important issues in a way that is both light-hearted and illuminating. Through farce, satire and just good old belly laughs, “You Can’t Take It With You,” is a play that speaks, not only to its own generation, but timelessly to issues that continue to touch us all. The play has been an enormous success, with a run of 837 performances on Broadway and successful revivals in 1965 and 1983. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1936 and the 1938 film version won the Academy Award. It well deserves its status as a truly “American” classic.

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