Glamies Review: 'You Can't Take It With You' At Potomac Falls High School

By Bridget Lockett of Stone Bridge High School

With boisterous, warmhearted, and delightfully offbeat energy, Potomac Falls High School’s production of You Can’t Take It with You is a vibrant celebration of choosing joy over convention.

The three-act play was originally written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart, premiering in Philadelphia before quickly moving to the Booth Theater on Broadway. The production would go on to win a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937 and became a film of the same name in the following year, winning the Academy Award for Best Picture in 1838.

The play itself is an amalgamation of Romeo and Juliet and The Addams Family, if the latter were stripped of all macabre characteristics and replaced with an equally eccentric family, the Sycamores. Alice Sycamore sticks out in her family for her normalcy, as the only one with a job. She works on Wall Street no less, working for Kirby & Co. There she meets the love of her life and the heir to the Kirby business, Tony Kirby.

The plot centers on Alice and Tony’s engagement, as Alice, armed with a to-do list, attempts to varnish over her family’s idiosyncrasies to make her household appear copacetic. When the Kirbys accidentally arrive one day early, comedic chaos ensues.

The Sycamores’ peculiarity is brought to the forefront of the stage through performers Madi Saunders as Alice’s sister, Essie Carmichael and Jordan Thomas as Essie’s husband, Ed Carmichael. Saunders owns the stage as a wannabe Ballet dancer who prances, pliés, and pirouettes across the Sycamore home in a testament to crash-prone physical comedy. Thomas carries the same zaniness as he borrows xylophone melodies from Beethoven and pseudo-political communist propaganda from Tolstoy to print just for the sake of printing.

The absurdity of the Sycamore household is only made possible through the detailed precision of Prop Crew Heads Niya Trice and Ella Kane. This duo had to do it all, creating bizarre tchotchkes including elaborate masks, fireworks, and a pink skull full of candy. They even went as far as baking real coconut puffs as a prop, adding an extra element of authenticity to the production.

Set Crew Heads Brayden Trammell and Cas Irate raised themselves up to the bar set by Trice and Kane, developing a convincing vignette of a 1936 New York City home. The entire set holds a certain degree of verisimilitude, as if an audience member could walk right past the fourth wall and live on the set. Trammell and Irate also allowed for versatility in their design, with the set perfectly catering to the explosions and turmoil of the second act.

The Sycamores acquire a myriad of eclectic people who became regular scene-stealers throughout the production, including Karam Radwan as Boris Kolenkhov, Essie’s dance teacher, whose thick Russian accent and foreboding Soviet pessimism were met with instantaneous laughter even when he wrestles dinner guests to the ground.

The end of the production erupts in a blow-out confrontation between the patriarchs of the Sycamore and Kirby families: Martin Vanderhof played by Shep Moe and Mr. Kirby embodied by Noah Faulhaber. Although initially appearing as if verging on senile, Moe portrays Vanderhof’s snake-handling, IRS-evading, tongue-in-cheek personality masterfully. His witty delivery is contrasted perfectly by Faulhaber’s rigid conviction of a straight-laced man ruined by Wall Street. Mr. Kirby unravels as he sees the merit to the Sycamore’s bohemian way of life and learns the titular financial lesson of the play.

Don’t miss Potomac Falls’ performance of You Can’t Take It with You for a rollicking night of wisecracking and whimsy.