STAGE REVIEW : Nutty but Not Berserk ‘Can’t Take It With You’

It makes sense that Kaufman and Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You” continues to find life on community theater and college stages. The 1936 Pulitzer Prize winner has screwball characters so broad that even inexperienced actors usually can find room to move.

Even when the performances go too far (and that happens all the time), there is always the writing to fall back on; much of the dialogue is timelessly crafty. So “You Can’t Take It With You” can take a licking as well as any comedy. And when everyone pulls it in, not always going for the wild gesture or the exaggerated role, this can be a gem of gentle-spirited zaniness.

The La Habra Community Theatre takes on the right focus in its production--most of the time. There are a few of those lapses into excess, but under Elisabeth Graham’s direction, the show generally keeps its wits (and performances) intact, making for a solid treatment.

Instead of giving a routine portrayal of Grandfather Martin as an addlepated nut, Jerry Lawson draws him as a wise, slightly eccentric, slightly sardonic patriarch. And Karen Pate’s Penny Sycamore is not so much the usual basket case, but just someone distracted by a surplus of charming idiosyncrasies.

The dizzy Essie (Karen Angela) does run about performing awkward pirouettes and several imaginary pas de deux all over Mark Laskowski’s smart living room set , and hubby Ed (Tim Lawson) does jerk around in something of a Pee-wee Herman mode, but the tone is not out of control.

Actually, with the Sycamores, you have to expect a measure of excessiveness. This post-Depression Addams Family lives in its own cockeyed world of relaxed expectations, taking unending pleasure in all the small things that make up life.

Martin hasn’t worked or paid income tax in dozens of years; he would rather attend college commencements and critique the speakers. Penny writes plays (“Poison Gas” is her war epic) because a typewriter was mailed to her by mistake. Her husband, Paul (Jack Reule), toys with erector sets and creates fireworks in the basement. Mr. DePinna (McCullon Smith), who delivered ice one day and just decided to stay on, helps Paul in the basement and runs around in a Greek tunic.

The only “normal” one is Alice (Deborah-Leigh Schmidt), who wants to marry her boss’s son Tony (Steven Eazell) and is a tad embarrassed by her kin. Things get iffy when Tony’s parents (Mark Shubin and Cheryl Haas) come around for dinner. Then a drunk movie actress shows up. Then the cops show up. Then all the fireworks explode. Then a Russian countess shows up.

It can all get rather busy, but Graham keeps it from becoming hectic, all the while maintaining the play’s comic flavor and sentimental underpinnings. The handling of Alice and Tony’s romance is overripe--especially the long-winded (but sensitively lit by Laskowski) proposal scene--but that’s a quibble in this otherwise steady show.

‘YOU CAN’T TAKE IT WITH YOU’

A La Habra Community Theatre production of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s comedy. Directed by Elisabeth Graham. With Karen Pate, Karen Angela, Valerie Jean Harvey, Jack Reule, McCullon Smith, Tim Lawson, Lawrence McNeal III, Jerry Lawson, Deborah-Leigh Schmidt, Seth Donsky, Steven Eazell, Franklin Stuart, Claire Kirk, Mark Shubin, Cheryl Haas, Mitchell Gordon, John Haas, Scott Ratner and DD Calhoun. Set and lighting by Mark Laskowski. Costumes by Dave Temple. Plays Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. through May 7 at the La Habra Depot Playhouse, 311 S. Euclid St., La Habra. Tickets: $6 to $8. (213) 691-8900.