Kristine Nielsen to Join James Earl Jones in YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU on Broadway; Jason Robert Brown to Write Original Music

Producers of the upcoming Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize winning drama You Can't Take It With You announce that Tony Award nominee Kristine Nielsen (Vonya and Sonia and Masha and Spike) joins previously announced Tony Award and Outer Critics Circle winner James Earl Jones (Gore Vidal's The Best Man, Fences, The Great White Hope) as Penelope Sycamore in the cast. Further casting will be announced soon.

Producers have also announced that Tony Award winner Jason Robert Brown and this season's two-time Tony Award Nominee for Best Original Score and Best Orchestrations for The Bridges of Madison County, will write original music for the production. This season, Brown has already won two Drama Desk Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award for The Bridges of Madison County.

Audience Rewards Members will be able to purchase tickets in advance of the general public by visiting AudienceRewards.com from Wednesday, June 4, 2014, through Tuesday, June 10, 2014. Tickets will go on sale to the general public beginning Wednesday, June 11, 2014, and will be available by calling (212) 239-6200 or by visiting telecharge.com

You Can't Take It With You will begin previews on August 26, 2014, at the Longacre Theatre (220 West 48th Street), with an opening night set for September 28, 2014. The production will be directed by six-time Tony Award-nominee and Drama Desk Award winner Scott Ellis (The Mystery of Edwin Drood, Twelve Angry Men, 1776).

You Can't Take It With You will be produced by Jeffrey Richards, Jerry Frankel, Jam Theatricals, Dominion Pictures, Gutterman Chernoff, Terry Schnuck, Caiola Productions, Gabrielle Palitz, R&D Theatricals, SunnySpot Productions, Jessica Genick and Will Trice.

Family can do crazy things to people. And the Sycamore family is a little crazy to begin with. James Earl Jones heads the wackiest household to ever hit Broadway in Kaufman and Hart's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic You Can't Take It With You. He plays wily Grandpa Vanderhof, leader of a happily eccentric gang of snake collectors, cunning revolutionaries, ballet dancers and skyrocket makers. But when the youngest daughter brings her fiancé and his buttoned-up parents over for dinner, that's when the real fireworks start to fly.

The original production of the play opened at the Booth Theater on December 14, 1936, and played for 837 performances. The play won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

Photo by Walter McBride