April 22, 2005
THEATER REVIEW
The Geffen serves up a warm
but bland staging of Kaufman and Hart's vintage comedy 'You Can't Take It With
You.'
by Rob Kendt
Special to The Times
Eccentricity is relative, depending on where you place the center.
Even in our current neoconservative age, it's safe to say that the goalposts
for American oddity are a bit further afield than they were in 1936, when Moss
Hart and George S. Kaufman's "You Can't Take It With You" first
introduced that quaint bohemian clan the Sycamores, and their unflappable
grand- patriarch Martin Vanderhof.
This gaggle of creative dilettantes and amateur freethinkersÑwho
somehow maintain a spacious New York household, complete with live-in cook,
entirely on collective goodwill and assorted real estate holdingsÑwouldn't
survive the first round of auditions for "The Surreal Life."
Mom (Lisa Richards) types vaguely scandalous plays; Dad (Ethan
Phillips) makes fireworks in the basement with an errant iceman (Tony
Abatemarco); and daughter Essie (Dagney Kerr) does a nonstop interpretive dance
around the house, often accompanied by husband Ed (Michael Loeffelholz) on
xylophone.
Meanwhile the house's cook (Carla Renata) regularly hosts her
unemployed boyfriend (Darryl Alan Reed); Essie's boisterous Russian dance
teacher (Michael Laskin) conveniently drops in to give his lessons around
dinnertime; and Grandpa Vanderhof (Roy Dotrice), the household's dropout
philosopher-king, sits in approving judgment, rising occasionally to toss a
dart or get a bit of air. Oh, and did I mention the snakes?
With the right stylization and performative snap, such mild
peculiarities might add up to the sort of propriety-tweaking chaos that plagues
the Sycamores' more strait-laced daughter, Alice (Alexandra James), who fears
that her well-born fiance (Chris L. McKenna) will run for the hills at the mere
sight of the house.
But as directed by Christopher Hart, son of one of the
playwrights, the Geffen's even-tempered new revival has more warmth than heat
and more shrugs than laughs. We can measure the production's style gap early on
when an IRS man (Jeff Marlow) bumbles in briefly, fuming and befuddled, to
demand back taxes from the recalcitrant patriarch. With his tightly wound
posture and sputtering delivery, this easily shaken functionary seems
infinitely stranger than anyone else onstage.
It's a reversal that's in line with the spirit of Kaufman and
Hart's play, with its gentle suggestion that the real crazies are outside
running the rat race, and that true sanity resides in the beatitude of this
familial commune. "Life is kind of simple if you just relax," says
old Vanderhof, in one of his homespun homilies.
But it's a point we shouldn't grant so easilyÑnot if we're
supposed to care a whit about the objections of Alice, or of her fiance's
parents (Christina Pickles, Conrad John Schuck), to the young couple's
compatibility.
The production provides glimmers of the screwball free-for-all it
might have been whenever Magda Harout is onstage. First as an incomprehensibly
blowzy drunk, then as a former Russian duchess reduced in social rank but not
in hauteur, Harout has broad comic marks to hit, and she nails them nicely. It
may seem easy to milk comic mileage from a line like "Don't be stingy with
your blintzes," or from a costume (by Jean-Pierre Dorleac) that suggests
an explosion at a Fuller Brush factory.
But few of Harout's fellow performers, given similar opportunities
to shine, deliver the same comic bang. The hopelessly untalented homebound
couple, Ed and Essie, seem more sad than funny here, while Abatemarco, as Mr.
Sycamore's purportedly colorful partner in incendiaries, mostly wanders about
looking puzzled. When the fiance's buttoned-up upper-crust parents arrive to
survey this motley scene, their look is less one of shock than pity.
The key to the production's ho-hum tone is Dotrice, an experienced
hand with not a trace of ham in him. His nonchalance, alas, seems to have
leaked into the production as a whole. While Vanderhof is a living model of the
virtues of chilling out, how can he be the eye of a storm when there's no
storm?
*
'You Can't Take It With You'
Where: Geffen Playhouse at the Brentwood Theatre, 1301 Wilshire
Blvd., Building 211, West L.A.
When: 7:30 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 8 p.m. Fridays, 4 and
8:30 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays
Ends: May 22
Price: $38 to $52
Contact: (310) 208-5454
Running Time: 2 hours, 20 minutes
Lisa Richards...Penelope Sycamore
Dagney Kerr...Essie
Carla Renata...Rheba
Ethan Phillips...Paul Sycamore
Tony Abatemarco...Mr. De Pinna
Michael Loeffelholz...Ed
Darryl Alan Reed...Donald
Roy Dotrice...Martin Vanderhof
Alexandra James...Alice
Jeff Marlow...Henderson
Chris L. McKenna...Tony Kerby
Michael Laskin...Boris Kolenkhov
Magda Harout...Gay Wellington, Olga
Conrad John Schuck...Mr. Kirby
Christina Pickles...Mrs. Kirby
By George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. Directed by Christopher Hart.
Sets by Gary Randall. Costumes by Jean-Pierre Dorleac. Lighting by Craig A.
Pierce. Sound by Jonathan Burke. Production stage manager Jill Gold.
Caption:
PHOTO: BETROTHED: Chris L. McKenna, left, and Alexandra James in
George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's "You Can't Take It With
You,"produced by the Geffen Playhouse at the Brentwood Theatre.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Lawrence K. Ho Los Angeles Times
PHOTO: (E1) Roy Dotrice stars in George S. Kaufman-Moss Hart
comedy.
PHOTOGRAPHER: Lawrence K. Ho Los Angeles Times
Edition: Home Edition
Section: Calendar
Page: E-2
Index Terms: Play Review
Copyright 2005 Los Angeles Times
Record Number: 000022409
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THEATER REVIEWThere's not enough to 'It'The Geffen serves up a
warm but bland staging of Kaufman and Hart's vintage comedy 'You Can't Take It
With You.'
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