This Pulitzer Prize winning American comedy classic hit the stage on March 4, 5, and 6, 2005 in the Silver Bay William Kelley High School Auditorium.

The 1937 Pulitzer Prize play, written by George S, Kaufman and Moss Hart, relates the humorous encounter between the loveable and eccentric upper east side New York City household of Grandpa Martin Vanderhof and the conservative Kirby family. The Vanderhof clan and friends are focused on the wholehearted pursuit of happiness while the Kirby’s represent the determined and serious pursuit of work and earning money perhaps to the exclusion of much enjoyment. The “culture clash” between the Vanderhof clan and the Kirby’s becomes even more complicated with the budding romance and engagement between Grandpa Vanderhof’s granddaughter Alice and the Kirby’s son, Tony.

You Can’t Take It With You was written during The Great Depression when issues of earning money and simply surviving weighed heavily on the American psyche. In its humorous way the play touches on issues of family love, pursuing the American Dream, success and failure, individualism, conformity and the culture clash of pursuing happiness versus money. The show opened on Broadway in December of 1936 and ran 837 performances. In 1938 Frank Capra directed a movie version of the play. There were also successful Broadway revivals of the show in 1965 and 1983. In 1979 CBS produced a television adaption of the play and in 1984 Jason Robards and Colleen Dewhurst starred in taped performance, available on video. The formula originated by Kaufman and Hart - a loveable family getting into scrapes and overcoming obstacles - has been adopted as a format by most of today’s television situation comedies. You Can’t Take It With You has become an American classic and is regularly produced by community theatres and high schools around the United States.