Kudos

Saw You Can't Take It With You Thursday. Loved it!
~Becky Mo
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Cheryl Ann...Essie is fabulous. You're so great in this show. You are so funny!
~SB
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We had a fun time watching your “acting” (but was it really acting, or just acting naturally?) in You Can’t Take It With You on Friday night!!! Bravo!
~B & KC
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Enjoyed the show Sunday. You lit up the stage.
~GG
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Thanks so much for all that you did to make “You Can’t Take It with You” a success! You and your fellow cast members were great! Your energy and dedication is vital to the success of the Little Theatre and we appreciate everything you do.
~Carrie Collins
President
The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem Board of Directors

Love and Support

Becky, Mom, Liz, Rodney and Marie, Bill and Kathy, Mallorie and Cade, Dick and Carolyn, and Myla...

I am once again so very honored for your love and support. Thank you so much for seeing You Can't Take It With You. I hope you had as much fun watching as I did dancing.

A Society Column

by Leigh McMillian

I've been writing this column for 10 years now, and I must say, I've never attended a gala quite like the one last week. I was invited to join Paul and Penny Sycamore as they celebrated the engagement of their daughter Alice to Mr. Anthony Kirby, Jr..

Things definitely started off on the wrong foot when Mr. and Mrs. Anthony Kirby, Sr. arrived a day early, interrupting Essie Carmichael's ballet lesson with renowned Russian ballet instructor Boris Kolenkhov.

I've got to hand it to Penny Sycamore. She did her best to piece together a last-minute dinner, sending the family's devoted maid Reba out to the store for frankfurters, Campbell's soup and canned corn. The menu changed dramatically when Reba came back with pickled pigs feet instead. I've heard that, since the party, the family has made the acquaintance of Duchess Olga Katrina. Too bad she wasn't on hand to make her famous blintzes.

Would-be actress Gay Wellington, invited to audition for one of Mrs. Sycamore's latest plays, added a little impromptu entertainment with her drunken rendition of "There was a young lady from Wheeling."

The evening wound down early when things got a little tense during a game of Forget-Me-Not. The Kirby's were on their way out the door when three officers from the Department of Justice arrived to arrest Ed Carmichael for distributing anti-government propaganda. Further investigation in the basement revealed a very entertaining but highly illegal fireworks operation run by Paul Sycamore and his partner, Mr. De Pinna.

Martin Vanderhof, Mrs. Sycamore's father, attempted to smooth things over but when I left to file this column, the whole group was being loaded into a paddy wagon, leaving several shipments of Love Dreams, an unfinished portrait and a jar of uneaten pickled pigs feet.

Which just goes to show, sometimes you can't take it with you.

Sad Day...

for fans of this wonderful Hollywood legend.

The Journal Review......

What Fun: A lot to take away with this
By Ken Keuffel
JOURNAL REPORTER
Published: September 20, 2008

The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem's current production of You Can't Take It With You is very funny.

But it manages to get a serious message across about values and priorities -- and one worth pondering as the show's many cast members astonish us with their eccentricities on the Reynolds Auditorium stage.

You Can't Take It With You was written by the famed team of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart.

It conquered Broadway in the middle 1930s, running there for more than 800 performances before being made into an Academy Award-winning film. It's of another time but remains remarkably relevant to ours.

The plot revolves around the Sycamores and the Kirbys, two radically different families that are brought together because Alice Sycamore (Ashley Davis) and Tony Kirby (Ben Palombo) have fallen in love.

The Kirbys are strait-laced, normal and consumed by the Wall Street culture of building wealth.

The Sycamores are just the opposite. Each real or adopted member of that clan zealously pursues his or her own interests.

Some of their hobbies are mundane, but many others are truly bizarre and include evading the taxman for years, making fireworks in a basement, writing plays about war and sex and circulating candies wrapped in paper on which incendiary messages are printed.

The contrasts between the happy Sycamores and the (initially) unhappy Kirbys are vividly drawn in director Stan Bernstein's attractive staging. We get a palpable sense of the wacky disharmony into which the two families fall.

There are a number of fine individual performances. I found that of Mikey Wiseman particularly memorable; he plays Kolenkhov, the ballet instructor who wears his Russianness on his sleeve in exaggerated-but-endearing fashion.

And David Westfall plays Grandpa Vanderhof quite convincingly, teaching us why it's sometimes important to quit the rat race, relax and live a little.

■ The Little Theatre of Winston-Salem will present You Can't Take It With You through Sept. 28 in Reynolds Auditorium. Evening shows will be at 8 p.m. tonight, Thursday, Friday and next Saturday, with a 2 p.m. matinee Sept. 28. Tickets are $18, $16 for seniors and $14 for students. Call 725-4001.

Aside from the physical toll the role of Essie took (constantly dancing around on tippy-toes is exhausting!) I had a great time!

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