The
new Broadway revival of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s You Can’t
Take It With You is spectacularly bad. This, perhaps, shouldn’t be
surprising. New York theatre no longer specializes in top-drawer revivals of
the classic comedies of the twenties, thirties, and forties. Once in an
ever-growing while, you’ll get a production like Doug Hughes’ The
Royal Family, done for Manhattan Theatre Club in 2009, where a
talented cast creates the kind of magic that makes you feel like the golden age
never ended. More often, though, you end up with subpar stagings that might
even make you question the integrity of the original work: the Kim Cattrall
Private Lives; the Victor Garber Present
Laughter; Roundabout’s ghastly Old Acquaintance.
There are even more such productions of which I don’t care to be reminded.
This
new take on the Pulitzer-winning classic, staged by Scott Ellis in a Roundabout
co-production, seemed so promising. On paper, the cast is divine. The set takes
your breath away as soon as the house lights dim. The incidental music by
three-time Tony winner Jason Robert Brown had my toes tapping. Yet as soon as
the gums started flapping, I knew something was terribly wrong.
