Defining the American Dream

Comedy classic is a study in contrasting lifestyles

by Steve Eskew

Americans never needed escapism more than during the Great Depression. With broken spirits and breadlines a mile long, most folks ached for laughter as a collective defense mechanism. Playwrights accommodated this constant craving by supplying a multitude of screwball comedies.

One such golden nugget disguises itself as a drawing room comedy and continues to influence sitcoms even today. Contrasting ultraconservative with idiosyncratic lifestyles, George H. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s Pulitzer Prize-winner, You Can’t Take It With You, concerns a family of zanies who leap into life like warriors and fight gloom to its most gleeful degree.

The delightfully eccentric Sycamore family seizes each day, taking all the time and freedom their passions demand. Thirty-five years ago, Grandpa Martin Vanderhof (Dennis Collins) instigated the family’s lackadaisical lifestyle by dropping out of the corporate rat race, never to work or pay taxes again. Satisfied to have lived humbly off his rental property and simply absorb the beauties of the average day, Grandpa now congratulates himself with the fact that not even the Internal Revenue Service can take away those blissful 35 years.

Sharing Grandpa’s philosophy, other family members wallow in their own whimsical whirlpool. Papa Paul Sycamore (Ron Chvala) an amateur inventor, fritters his days away developing fireworks with his old crony, Mr. De Pinna (Michael Farrell), who became the household’s permanent guest eight years ago when he delivered ice. Paul’s wife, Penelope Sycamore (Kim Jubenville) suddenly began writing plays simply because someone once left a typewriter at their door.

Employed by a stock brokerage house, daughter Alice (Laura Beeghly) rates as the family rebel because she actually embraces the American work ethic. Not completely without quirks herself, she confesses to falling in love with the back of boyfriend Tony Kirby’s head before she’d actually met him. Tony (Seth Fox) is her wealthy employer’s son. She realizes too late that she’s pulled a boo boo when she impulsively invites Tony and his socialite parents to supper at her nut-hut of a home. Thankfully, her wacky family faithfully promises to act normally on the night of the dinner party.

The real fun begins when Tony accidentally-on-purpose brings his parents (Paul Schneider and Stacie Lamb) to the soiree one night early. Caught in the act of being themselves, the outrageous Sycamores stick out like a procession of sore thumbs beside the aristocratic Kirbys. What could be worse for high-toned aristocrats than the prospect of a dinner of pickled pig feet? Being mistakenly arrested and dragged off to jail with this madcap household as cellmates, that‘s what.

The actors play off each other so well that it’s hard to catch them “acting.” The graceful Nora Vetter (as Alice’s sister Essie), a would-be ballerina, perpetually dances around the stage, but graciously restrains herself from upstaging her fellow players and fits in perfectly with the ensemble. The incomparable Connie Lee wows the audience by portraying two charming characters, excelling with each. The company clearly has a ball and thoroughly illustrates that a play is play.

Director Susan Baer Collins with designers Steven L Williams and Georgiann Regan have created an exquisite peek into the past with unique theatricality. Truly a director’s director, Baer Collins maintains a remarkable pace while stylishly balancing a 19-member ensemble.

Superbly demonstrating the thesis behind the characters’ farcical rampages, she shows the preposterousness of both conservative and liberal extremism, accomplishing it all with an enchanting playfulness while artfully underscoring one of Grandpa Vanderhof’s most poignant lines: “Life’s beautiful if you let it come to you.”

You Can’t Take It With You runs at the Omaha Community Playhouse through April 29, Wednesdays-Saturdays at 7:30, Sundays at 2 and 6:30 p.m., except no evening performance April 29. Tickets are $19-$30; call 553.0800 or visit omahaplayhouse.com.