You Can't Take It with You Broadway Reviews

A lot of shows can make you laugh. What's rare is a play that makes you beam from curtain to curtain. Such is the effect of Scott Ellis's felicitous revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's 1936 comedy about one improbably happy family during the Great Depression...The evening's tone is set and sustained by Mr. Jones and Ms. Nielsen, who waltz through the show with the secret but infectious smiles of people listening to unheard, endorphin-boosting strains.

The deluxe revival is directed with unflagging energy and an assured grasp of the play's shifting rhythms by comedy pro Scott Ellis. This is a work that champions the individualist, and the director follows suit by marshaling his impeccable cast to create loopy characterizations. This is a well-oiled ensemble full of delightful character turns from actors as adept with the witticisms as they are with the physical comedy.

Rarely have I seen such a large collection of scene-stealers on one stage. Check that. There's so much hilarity occurring that no one can steal a complete scene. What these thieving actors do is steal extended moments. They make off with eye-popping sequences that have been carefully focused by Ellis, whose contribution here is impeccable.

Though the cast is peerless, they attack it unevenly. Scott Ellis, who did brilliantly with the revival romp of the big-cast THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD, has Jones at the center, understated and stately, with Rogers, Ashford and Ashley playing it so over the top it's like they're in a vaudeville act. Even so, they're almost demure compared to Julie Halston, who plays a soused actress and deserves a special Tony Award for Going Up a Flight of Stairs.

YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU still feels like the perfect escapist comedy for tough times, in spite of its creaky references to 'the 48 states' and Eleanor Roosevelt. For that, you can thank a top-notch ensemble that includes Rose Byrne, in an impressive Broadway debut, as well as helmsman Scott Ellis ('Drood'), whose zippy direction brings the play's three acts in at 2 hours and 20 minutes... It's worth the price of admission alone to see the usually booming actor in a calming and comedic role.

Scott Ellis' zippy and giddy revival -- which sports a top quality cast including James Earl Jones, Rose Byrne, Elizabeth Ashley, Kristine Nielsen, Julie Halston, Mark Linn Baker and Annaleigh Ashford all letting loose -- has a comfort food, feel good flavor to it.

'We don't associate Jones with comedy, but he displays the lightest touch here (unlike the sodden Lionel Barrymore in the film). Has the word 'pixilated' ever been used to describe a basso profondo? Jones at times gives the impression of a two-ton hummingbird, and he appears to float whenever he opens his mouth... The great character actors of Hollywood's golden age have nothing over these legit troupers, well known to New York audiences, and that includes the always rollicking Kristine Nielsen, Annaleigh Ashford, Reg Rogers, and Julie Halston, who chews every step as she crawls up designer David Rockwell's magnificent staircase.

Masterful the blueprint may be, but a weak ensemble and tin-eared direction can screw it up. But this revival (the first in more than 30 years) is stuffed with the city's finest comic talents. Besides the aforementioned pros, marvelous Reg Rogers lopes around the periphery as a raffish Russian dance teacher, while Julie Halston stops the show as a dipsomaniacal stage hack Penny brings home. Scott Ellis conducts the escalating craziness with style and grace on David Rockwell's perfectly cluttered, eclectic living-room set. The Sycamores will welcome literally anyone into the family: It's hard to resist running away to join their circus.

Most deliciously, there is the dancing daughter, played by Annaleigh Ashford -- almost entirely on her toes -- with a joyful combination of humor and virtuosity. Jane Greenwood's terrific costumes appreciate that people without money are not people without style. And there are pet snakes and a massive turntable set used perhaps once too often and, just in case too much is never enough, a basket of kittens to admire.

There's no avoiding its old-fashionedness; You Can't Take It With You has a principal cast of 15, three acts, and a taste for whimsy over realism. Its idea of an au courant namedrop is Trotsky. But in this, the third of the eight 1930s collaborations between George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, the dramatic architecture feels more purpose-built than those once-modish elements might suggest. The whimsy is tactical. The period is crucial. And the play's argument requires its big structure. That argument, as the title indicates, is about the uses of money: a topic no less worthy of consideration in 1938, when the country was leaping from depression toward war, than it is today, when it is doing something similar.

At times the stage is so crowded that you're not sure where to look - David Rockwell's busy set, covered with dozens and dozens of framed pictures, doesn't help. But no matter where the eye wanders, something wacky is happening. It could be Julie Halston emerging from a drunken slumber. Or Ashford clumsily standing en pointe. Or Nielsen rolling her eyes as she lifts a (real live) kitten from her typing-paper supply. Clearly, too much of a good thing is just right.

'You Can't Take It With You' declares itself in a stage direction: 'This is a house where you do as you like, and no questions asked.' That license to live the carefree life of children at play, extended by this 1936 comedy classic by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, appealed to a nation sunk in the Great Depression. But for a modern audience paranoid about 'entitlements,' not so much. That's one excuse, anyway, for this curiously inert revival helmed by Scott Ellis. Toplined by the great James Earl Jones and Rose Byrne, a perfectly swell cast can't convince us that they're having fun living the life of social parasites.

You wouldn't, of course, expect nonstop cartoon looniness to reign for the full 2 ½ hours of this three-act comedy; the tension in the plot is the 'surprise' visit to the Sycamores by the stodgy, patrician Kirbys, parents of ardent Tony (Fran Kranz), who wants to marry the Sycamores' 'normal' daughter, Alice (Rose Byrne). But the embrace by the Sycamores of their quirky individualism feels less than total. That seems especially true for Jones, who, in the guise of the family patriarch, proves a genial rather than compelling presence. When he expounds on his character's peculiar philosophy - why, for example, Grandpa Martin doesn't pay taxes - it isn't with the kind of conviction that helps us understand, or giggle at, the sort of quaint contrarian he is meant to be. Lovers of vintage screwball comedy - a kind of lightweight cousin of absurdism - will dig its splashy return to Broadway. Others will have to wait for a more convincing resuscitation of the genre.

Like many great comedies, this play tickles the funny bone and touches the heart. One very sweet scene is a hug between Alice and her dad (Mark Linn-Baker). He dabbles in fireworks and lights a bright red sparkler that mirrors her head-over-heels feelings for Tony. It's a beautiful moment. When it comes to the memory of it, you can take it with you.