PLAY: "You Can't Take It With You"

Photo/Rod Goodman

Everybody in the popular Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman comic staple, You Can't Take It With You, has big dreams, bigger hearts, and even bigger personalities. T. Schreiber Studio, has brought this classic period piece back, but it seems as half-hearted a hobby as that of the entire Sycamore clan. Director Peter Jensen means well: his second act even manages to spark some life into the show. But the rest of the piece only succeeds in putting a lot of balls in the air at once: so many, in fact, that it becomes hard to care about any of them.

Jacqueline van Biene, who plays the romantic (and embarrassed) Alice, is an exception to the rule, and those in her direct sphere of influence, like Peter Judd (as a savvy and wry "Grandpa") and Josh Sienkiewicz (as Alice's love interest, the well-mannered Tony Kirby) come across looking much better for her company. Some of the cast, like the vocally overactive Margot Bercy (as Penny) to the physically overactive Jamie Neumann (as Essie) are talented actors, but misdirected into a constant state of excitement, while others, like Jerry Rago (Paul) waddle through their scenes without any emotion, as if trying to balance out the crazy. And then there are actors like Laurence Cantor who get lost in the crazed Russian stereotype (as Boris Kolenkhov) or find themselves channeling comedians like George Carlin, as with John Mulcahy (as Mr. De Pinna). Such classical humor requires meticulous rhythm, not just soul, and the result is the worst of freestyle jazz: lively but bland.

The play has aged pretty well, for a '30s hit, although some of the jokes that were funny then are funny now in a more sardonic way. The lack of control and cohesion for the comedy, however, are what give this away as a knock-off. Jill Bianchini plays Olga like a female Borat, and Jim Cyborowski plays Mr. Kirby as a stricter version of Boy Meets World's Mr. Feeny. These caricatures, once original, are now drowned in a double-dose of culture shock: that delivered by the actors, and that of the audiences trying to process the mad-cap antics.

You Can't Take It With You is a pretty ambitious play to pull off, but that's not an excuse for its sloppiness. All that was cute and charming about the story now seems tarnished and satired, and rather than cheering for the love of dysfunction, there's now more chuckling at pathos. Happiness, once measured in humor, is now drowned in cheap jokes, and while there's parts of this show I treasure, I don't want to take it with me.

PLAY: "Picasso at the Lapin Agile"

Picasso at the Lapin Agile is one of the few comedies I've seen that successfully mixes the highbrow with the low, which should be no surprise as it's written by Steve Martin, an oscillating force if there ever were one. However, the current presentation at T. Schreiber Studio is somewhat of a solemn affair, and as a result, the joy of Martin's comic observations are often muted. Cat Parker's direction is excellent, with clever blocking that makes the punctilious puns of this play seem more natural, but the cast lacks the energy for slapstick, and the passion of Picasso (and Einstein, to a lesser affair) is a bit sloppy.

The show is on a slippery slope when the humorous rapport between characters gets too close to the rhapsodic discussion of art; when Schmendiman enters, he's supposed to steal the show with his absurdism: he's not supposed to be the first instance of laugh-out-loud comedy. It's not Parker's fault: she can change the lighting and underscore the quiet drama, but the only place she can do that for the comedy is the wild-west showdown between Picasso and Einstein.

All the technical choices work in Parker's favor, too: the set evokes the early-20th century vibe of a Parisian bar, and the costumes are dashing, be they intellectual or painterly, rich or snobbish, blue collar or blue suede. The cast speaks frequently to the audience (in fact, some of Martin's jokes are aimed at the structure of the play itself, like the Order of Appearance), so the choice to have VIP guests drinking wine in the side booths is both clever and an efficient use of space. The one ill-fitting choice is to have the bartender introduce the theater company and the play at the same time; that takes too much from the setting, and considerably slows the pace of the opening. (A fact that isn't helped by either Frank Mihelich's plodding simplicity as Freddy, or Jim Aylward's unsexed portrayal of Gaston.)

On the whole, this production of Picasso at the Lapin Agile is pretty good. It's a little too sober--the actors don't seem to be having very much fun channeling Martin--but it's got a pleasant aftertaste, and there are plenty of icebox laughs left in this masterful script.