In case you’ve not been paying attention, we run two plays in rotating rep this month. Last week our intrepid cast opened the first of the pair, and The Taming of the Shrew has been warmly received and well reviewed. This week we drop the other comedic shoe, presenting Kaufman and Hart’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, You Can’t Take It with You. Tonight is a lower-cost admission, as we present a preview performance, and tomorrow, Friday, the lights come up at 7:30 on the play’s opening night.
We’ll present You Can’t Take It with You this Saturday at 7:30, but on Sunday the cast and our crew really earn their keep, for that’s when we begin to rotate the plays in and out of the Wells-Metz Theatre. The cast stays the same; the theatre stays the same; but the plays and the costumes and the sets shift in the schedule (which is detailed here).
Here, for instance, is scenic designer Tim Barbiaux’s rendering of the set for You Can’t Take It with You, the main room of the Vanderhof family home in New York City in 1936:
Tim’s set for The Taming of the Shrew has, by necessity, much the same shape, but the floor covering and back wall and many details are quite different. Instead of an interior, we have an exterior of a house that, over the course of the performance, takes on the identity of several locations in sunny, contemporary Florida:
On Sunday we’ll play You Can’t Take It with You at a 2 o’clock matinee. After the show ends, our crew will change over the set, shifting out the 1936 interior and setting up the present-day exterior. Then at 7:30 on Sunday evening, we’ll present The Taming of the Shrew, and the switching will, more or less, go on from then until the end of the run of both shows.
Do check the schedule, so you’ll know which comedy is playing when. Then again, should you show up for the “wrong” play, you’ll still be able to see an enjoyable performance of a terrific comedy—both of these plays are solid, comic productions.
