STAGE REVIEW : South Coast Rep Revitalizes ‘You Can’t Take It With You’

Many of the lovable eccentrics in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s “You Can’t Take It With You” were based on members of Kaufman’s family, wrote Howard Teichmann in his “George S. Kaufman, an Intimate Portrait.”

On the next page of the same biography, Teichmann noted that Kaufman paid for the emigration of 20 of his distant relatives out of Nazi Germany--with the proviso that none of them should ever contact him. This was during the same prewar period when “You Can’t Take It With You” was produced (in 1936).

In other words, it appears that Kaufman had mixed feelings about his relatives. Perhaps the best place for him--and us--to enjoy them was on a stage.

But not just any stage. A production seen five years ago in Beverly Hills made “You Can’t Take It With You” seem worn out.

Enter South Coast Repertory and director Warner Shook. And suddenly “You Can’t Take It With You” is a comedy that you want to take home with you. If only every crazy family could be this much fun, we would all want a piece of the craziness.

Alice (Robin Goodrin Nordli), the pivotal character in the plot, has some of the same mixed feelings about her family. She loves them, but how can she bring home her boyfriend (David Drummond) to meet this clan?

Her Grandpa (Robert Cornthwaite) retired 35 years ago and devotes his time to commencement exercises, pet snakes and ignoring the Internal Revenue Service. Her father (Richard Doyle) makes firecrackers in the basement with the erstwhile iceman (Gibby Brand). Her mother (Kelly Jean Peters) started writing plays years ago, when a typewriter was delivered by mistake--and hasn’t finished one play.

Then there is Alice’s sister (Lynne Griffin), a would-be ballet dancer, who earns a few bucks making candy that her dim husband Ed (John Ellington) hand-delivers. Into each candy box Ed inserts a fortune cookie-style slip of paper, bearing an inflammatory political slogan--not because he’s a zealot but because he likes the way the words look when he prints them on his little press.

Throw in a flamboyant Russian ballet teacher (Paul Keith), a drunken actress (Jane A. Johnston) who wants to read Mama’s plays, and a Russian duchess who’s now a New York waitress (Joan Stuart-Morris), and you wonder how the household domestic (Cynthena Sanders) and her live-in boyfriend (Mark Conley) keep the house in any semblance of order.

Alice not only has to introduce the gang to her beau, but also to his father, her own boss (John-David Keller) and his wife (Penelope Windust). The very idea makes her blanch.

Nordli blanches beautifully, but then everyone in the cast is beyond reproach. Shook has guided this play’s comic rhythms to perfection.

Cornthwaite is absolutely calm and centered as the philosophical anchor of this scatterbrained bunch, a vibrant voice for the writers’ philosophy that individuals will do all right if institutions--from Wall Street to Washington to Moscow--leave them alone.

This is hardly a profound message, and the play raises a few questions or contradictions that aren’t resolved. For example, how can anyone in this house, of all houses, tell the boyfriend’s mother that her interest in spiritualism is “silly”? But then, that’s what Alice’s mother thinks--and anyone in this family gets to say whatever is on his or her mind.

That the denizens of this house still like each other after years of this kind of free speech is a tribute to the spirit of American democracy, a spirit that sometimes seems as threatened today as it did in 1936. This isn’t just a quaint period piece.

On the other hand, the designers treat the period with the lavish respect that’s customary at South Coast. Michael Devine’s set is a baroque construction of reddish-brown furniture and gewgaws, and Michael Roth’s selection of tunes for the moments before, between and after the acts is ingenious.

Don’t dart for the door at the final curtain, or you’ll miss the cast’s rendition of “Look for the Silver Lining,” a perfect little coda.

* “You Can’t Take It With You,” South Coast Repertory, 655 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa, Tuesdays-Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 7:30 p.m.; Saturday and Sunday matinees, 2:30 p.m. Ends April 5. $23-$30. (714) 957-4033. Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes.

‘You Can’t Take It With You’

Kelly Jean Peters: Penelope Sycamore

Lynne Griffin: Essie

Cynthena Sanders: Rheba

Richard Doyle: Paul Sycamore

Gibby Brand: Mr. De Pinna

John Ellington: Ed

Mark Conley: Donald

Robert Cornthwaite: Martin Vanderhof

Robin Goodrin Nordli: Alice

Bud Leslie: Henderson

David Drummond: Tony Kirby

Paul Keith: Boris Kolenkhov

Jane A. Johnston: Gay Wellington

John-David Keller: Mr. Kirby

Penelope Windust: Mrs. Kirby

Joan Stuart-Morris: Olga

Robert Kokol, Mark Ciglar, Scott Harrison: Others

A play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman. Director Warner Shook. Sets Michael Devine. Lights Peter Maradudin. Costumes Ann Bruice. Music and sound supervision Michael Roth. Production manager Edward Lapine. Stage manager Bonnie Lorenger.