You Can’t Take It With You

2nd Street Theater, Oregon

About the Show

The 1937 Pulitzer Prize winner You Can’t Take It With You unfolds in the New York City house of the cheerfully eccentric Sycamore family who are living life to the fullest, because after all, you can’t take it with you.
The only luxury that interests the Sycamore family is the luxury of time and freedom to pursue whatever activity seizes their passion. Grandpa Martin Vanderhof has not worked or paid his taxes since dropping out of the corporate rat race thirty-five years ago. Wandering about and enjoying the beauty of each day is his vocation. Paul Sycamore, a self styled inventor, spends most of his time puttering around the basement, making fireworks with his buddy, Mr. De Penna. The latter has remained in the household since coming to deliver ice eight years earlier. Penny Sycamore writes plays that will never be published because someone delivered a typewriter to the house. And on and on, with additional household members and assorted visitors.
There is one “normal” family member, Alice, a sweet 9 to 5 working girl employed in a stock brokerage house. Alice is going out with her employer’s son, Tony Kirby. They are in love and Alice is planning on inviting Tony and his uptight and wealthy parents to the Sycamore home for dinner. Of course, the resultant culture clash is a houseful of fun.