You Can't Take It With You

Grandpa Vanderhof and his wacky family, the Sycamores, have been happily living their zany lives in his house by Columbia University in New York for many years. This family (and their friends) are a madcap group of eccentrics, marching to the beat of their own drum, with pride and joy. Their hobbies include collecting snakes, building fireworks in the basement, writing a myriad of plays that never get published, and taking ballet lessons. Things like stress, jobs, and paying taxes to the government are for other people, not for them! But when practical young Alice Sycamore becomes engaged to her company’s Vice President Tony Kirby, the Vanderhof/Sycamore clan must straighten up to meet the new in-laws. Disaster ensues when the Kirbys arrive at the wrong time and, despite the best laid plans, see Alice’s family in all of its crazy glory.

You Can’t Take It With You won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, and was adapted for the screen in 1938, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture and Best Director.

It opened on Broadway in 1936. A smash hit, the show ran for 838 performances and returned to Broadway five times, most recently in 2014 which featured James Earl Jones.