Open State players have fun with classic comedy

At their best, family ties offer some of the closest, most intimate bonds we can expect to have in life. But families can also be marvelous as well as frustrating curiosities. Take Alice Sycamore’s family, for instance. Her mother writes plays because 8 years ago, a typewriter was delivered to the house by mistake. Her grandfather gave up a promising business to watch circuses and listen to college commencement speeches. They eat corn flakes and whole tomatoes for dinner. They keep pet snakes. And every so often, a sonic blast comes from the basement where Alice’s father makes fireworks.

It’s no wonder that Alice wants to be very careful when she brings her fiance’s upscale parents home to meet the family. The predicament sets the stage for Broadway’s classic comedy “You Can’t Take it With You,” which opened last weekend and will run again next weekend at Winterport Open Stage.

Written in the 1930s by Moss Hart and George Kauffman, the three-act situation comedy about how to make sense out of the stress of modern life still has a lot of bang for the buck in the 1990s. The term “stress,” in fact, was coined about the same time this play was written, and was described as the “rate of wear and tear” on the body, or, put another way, the continual state of alarm that deadlines, children, payments and relationships can cause.

For the Sycamores, it comes down to one plain and simple coping technique: Have a lot of fun. And, despite the difficulty their one, rather mainstream offspring has, they are a fun-loving family. Odd, but fun-loving.

Which is exactly what the Winterport Open Stage cast is, too. Under the direction of Erica Farrar, these community troupers love fun. They fly around Robert DesLaurier’s set of a New York apartment as if they fit right into the loony script. From Shari Gervasi’s bumbling ballet moves, to Jim Tatgenhorst’s credulous innocence, to Rudy Rawcliffe’s shameless gusto, to Theresa Curtis’ ditzy elan, to Bill Martin’s Wall Street stuffiness and Kurt Maddan’s sensible madness, the show offers some genuinely amusing moments.

The fun these folks are having makes it possible to overlook some of the inevitable pauses and line slips of a community production. But the cast really does grow on you in meaningful ways, and the good script never fails. In short, the show is an effective reminder that you CAN’T take it with you, so have fun now. Going to this play is a good place to start.

“You Can’t Take It With You” will be presented 7:30 p.m. Nov. 3 and 4 at Samuel Wagner Middle School in Winterport. For information, call 223-2501.