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You Can't Take It With You

Timber Lake Playhouse Review

By Sue Langenberg

Timber Lake Playhouse moves from its rousing opener, "West Side Story" and launches its footlights forward to the second show of six, "You Can't Take it With You." The summer stock theatre power packs its dizzying schedule this season with an energetic array of musicals, comedies and plays with some children's theatre thrown in.

"You Can't Take it With You" is three acts of hilarity as a dysfunctional family, the Sycamores, full of happy eccentrics awkwardly attempts its own sudden version of normal behavior for a day or so. The clash is destined for laughs as normal versus abnormal leaving us wondering just exactly what normal is.

The Pulitzer Prize winning play was written in 1937 by Moss Hart and George Kaufman long before the word "dysfunctional" emerged as a household term. While some call the play a farce, TLP artistic director Brad Lyons corrects that it is not a "slamming door" type, but rather a comedy of timing and personalities at odds with every action and reaction.

You Can't Take It With You Cast

The classic Kaufman & Hart story, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, is one of the most popular and successful comedies of modern times. A "normal" day with the happy yet eccentric Sycamore family includes xylophone-playing, fireworks in the basement, a ballerina, a playwriting mother and a Russian Duchess who works as a waitress. Can a simple girl from such a crazy family ever find love? (Photo courtesy of TLP)

Lyons goes on to say that the pace of the first two acts is similar to Attention Deficit Disorder as each character plays out individual idiosyncrasies in a dream world while no one listens to each other.The third act resolves an innocent romance trying to flower amid chaos. All action eventually teaches us a lesson about what is really important in life.

It passes the test of timeless because every family everywhere might have a black sheep or two with a dreamy, dizzy daughter who aspires to something she cannot do, or a mother still trying to solve a huge identity crisis, or someone else who thinks he is something that he is not. At the epicenter of all might well be the grandfather who sits back and philosophizes that even a life of lunacy is happier than the pursuit of money and material things.

Household grandfather Martin Vanderhof is superbly played by seasoned Chicago actor Bob Maher whose bass-voiced delivery and strong stage presence views all other characters with a worldly grain of salt; "How many of us," he raises a philosophical forefinger, "would be willing when we're young to settle for what we eventually get." But grandfather also keeps pet snakes, just to prove himself as crazy as everyone else in the household.

Dizzy and typewriter-tapping mother of the household Penelope Sycamore is played by returning TLP actress Samantha Dubina, and marvelous character with her nearly cartoonish body language that explains a thoroughly scatterbrained presence. Mike Yarnell as husband Paul devotes his life to perfecting explosives.

Character actor Jeremy Day, also returning to TLP this season, plays goofy Boris Kolenkhov with comic ease. His sudden gestures and globe-sized eye contact are rather like a reincarnation of comic Harvey Korman's early career. Day will be a talent to watch.

Elsewhere in the cast include Kelli Koloszar as Essie the prancing starry-eyed ballerina, Justin Banta the musician/printer who accomplishes nothing, Nattalyee Randall the house maid with her searing remarks and Matthew Griffin as her flirting boyfriend Donald. Nathan Grant plays an awkward Mr. De Pinna who showed up one day and never left as did Shannon Boland as Gay Wellington, the drunk from the street who passes out as a fixture in the set.

Budding romantics are played by Heather Herkelman as daughter Alice, Nick Toussaint as Tony Kirby, John Knight as his staid Wall Street father, tax man Jim Beaudry as Henderson and a live snake to portray itself.

Timber Lake Playhouse is a hop, skip and a jump to the boonies outside Mt. Carroll. "You Can't Take it With You" opens Thursday June 19 and runs 11 performances including two 2 p.m. matinees on Sunday and Wednesday. Group rates available. Call the box office at (815) 244-2035 for tickets and information about lodgings at Timber Lake Resort and dinner/theatre option.

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