Fireworks at the Fort

'Can't take it With You' leaves audience laughing

by Zach Hively

If the Capulets ran a threepenny carnival and the Montagues lorded over Wall Street, then you’d get the firecracker laughs of "You Can’t Take it With You." In this play, now playing at Fort Lewis College's Mainstage Theatre, lovebirds Alice and Tony want to get hitched, but first they must blend their opposite families. Their botched attempts make them wonder: “Where does the fun come in?”

The FLC theater department is staging one more weekend of the 1937 Pulitzer Prize-winning drama by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. Professor Felicia Lansbury Meyer, an award-winning film director and a stage performer in her own right, directs.

Except for a few references to the 48 states and the Russian Revolution, "You Can’t Take it With You" could very well be a 21st century piece. It echoes contemporary political pressures as it touches on taxation and the role of government. Seeing the play set today might have been interesting, but Meyers chose to keep it in its Depression-era New York timeframe. Really, though, who can complain when the stage so effectively transports us back to post-Victorian Americana?

The living room of Alice Sycamore’s exuberant and eclectic family mingles accuracy and eccentricity, from the salmon-colored walls to the mismatched furniture and the Dutch clogs. This home is cozy, and stage manager Evan West clearly enjoyed filling the shelves with enough trinkets and treasures (and, for realsies, snakes and kittens!) to hide Waldo for days.

The home reflects its inhabitants. (See if you can follow the bouncing squirrel through this family tree!) From the first lights up, Alice’s inquisitive mother, Penny Sycamore (Jessica Fairchild), glows with unburstable cheer that fills the house for all three acts. Her husband, fireworks designer Paul Sycamore, is played with appropriate childlike enthusiasm by sycamore-tall Austin Minard. Their older daughter, wannabe-ballerina Essie (Molly Quinn), is married to xylophone-chiming Ed Carmichael (James Rollins). Delightfully dingy, Quinn and Rollins perform at their peak when they interact as the flirtatious couple who, after several years together, are starting to think about making babies. Over the entire clan sits Martin Vanderhof (Charles Pike). Nearly everyone, regardless of relation, calls him Grandpa, and he carries both the script and the family. Pike teeters between puttering and gleeful, and he really warms up as the show progresses. His charisma glues the cast together.

The family residence includes its oddball guests. Boris Kolenkhov, the exiled Russian played by Bradley Abeyta, threatens to wrestle the show away from its main cast. Think Kramer with a thick Slavic accent and thicker Slavic humor. He is friendly with the also-exiled Grand Duchess Olga Katrina (Camille Libouban-Gundersen). “Do not be stingy with the blintzes!” Olga commands herself, and she certainly isn’t, if “blintzes” equals “pizzazz.” And though she is a one-time visitor, actress Gay Wellington (Katy Faulkner) sloshed her way into my heart with her soggy, crass, polka-dotted presence, even while passed out on the fainting couch.

These boisterous characters make most scenes effectively chaotic, a waltz where the rhythms of its dancers create the music. Out of the hubbub, Alice Sycamore tries to set herself apart as a normal stenographer in a normal office, where she falls in love with Tony Kirby, the normal son of a normal corporate baron. On stage, Brianna Devore expresses Alice’s range of insecure emotions, though her girlish charm peeks out even when disaster ignites. Scott Smith portrays the love-struck Kirby heir a bit stiffly, a problem perhaps rooted in the script, where Tony is more a mover of the plot than an emotional crux. It’s his father, Mr. Kirby (Robert Harrington-Megason), who has room to grow. Like Alice, he needs to let the fun in.

After an hour and 20 minutes, the first two acts crackle into chaos and the cast really hits its stride. There’s a 15-minute intermission, and in the final half hour, all seems lost for the Sycamores and the mismatched lovers. Yet Grandpa and the perfectly timed dose of Grand Duchess offer the tonic of laughter. They demonstrate that “there ought to be something more” than work and riches.

Once Alice comes to that conclusion, she gets to have a little fun. And it’s about high time, as the audience and the rest of her family have been enjoying themselves thoroughly for the entire comedic performance.

The Fort Lewis College cast and crew of "You Can’t Take it With You" revel in their production. By the end of the play, the captivating insanity of Alice’s family will enchant you down the rabbit hole with them. If the odd offstage firecracker fails to jumpstart your heart, the chance to experience fun for fun’s sake ought to do the trick.