For the week of November 19 - 24, 2003

Screwball comedy
livens up Hailey stage

‘You Can’t Take It With You’
mounted by WRHS

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By DANA DUGAN
Express Staff Writer

Written by theater masters Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, "You Can’t Take It With You" is a 19-character, one-room, tight, funny, intimate play. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937, and was made into a hit movie a year later.

Cody Cole and Lisa Feldhuson star in “You Can’t Take It With You.” Courtesy photo

The Wood River High School presents this classic screwball comedy Thursday, Friday and Saturday, Nov. 20 through Nov. 22, at 7:30 p.m. in the old high school theater in Hailey. Directed by Becky Miller, with assistance by New Theatre Company Artistic Director David Blampied, the play takes place in New York City in 1936.

The Vanderhof family, who all live together in an old brownstone, is cozy, warm and charmingly eccentric. Essie practices ballet moves, while her husband Ed plays his xylophone. Matriarch Penny writes plays that never have an ending, while her husband hangs out in the basement concocting tricky fireworks with a guy who showed up to deliver milk several years back and never left. Russian dancer immerges come and go with the excuse of teaching Essie but usually just end up eating. Grandpa, a blithely cheerful tax protestor, is the engine that keeps the perpetual motion machine running.

Within this chaos resides the "normal" member of the family, Alice, who has a real job as a Wall Street secretary for a fearsome Mr. Kirby. She has also fallen in love with Tony Kirby, by chance, her boss’s son, who is the misfit of his own starchy family. Tony's family is invited for dinner at Alice’s home but she fears that once they get a look at Casa Vanderhof, the romance will fizzle. A proper, sit-down dinner party is planned, but as luck—and a well crafted play— would have it, the Kirbys arrive, dressed to the nines, a day early.

Oy!

Chaos reigns as Penny leads a free-association game, maid Helga scrambles to get together a quick dinner, fireworks explode and a pesky G-man arrives hot on the trail of Grandpa.

This production stars Jessica Rice as Alice, Susie Gubumpa as Penny, Dan Parnes as Grandpa, Cody Cole as Tony, Lisa Feldhuson as Essie and Curtis Hopfenbeck as Ed.

The Kirbys are played by Robert Cruz and Bev Gonzales. The rest of the cast includes Rachel Odio, Michael Wise, Jake Peterson, Sean Logullo, Max and Ally Kessler, Milton Allen, Matt Lewis and Lacy Toussaint.

Tickets for the show are $8 for adults and $5 for students. They are available at the theatre on the nights of the performances.

 

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