Review
"The seven-member cast has been assembled from the cream of the veteran Chicagoland acting pool. Any production featuring Francis Guinan automatically attracts our interest. Guinan can excel in droll, urbane characters but he triumphs here as the grizzled, domineering Marty. In a commanding performance, Guinan runs the changes from belligerence to painful tearful breakdowns. He is perfectly complimented by Penny Slusher as his devoted wife who finally has had enough of her husband’s controlling personality." - Chicago Theatre Land

A feature article with quotes from Penny
Enthusiasm of eccentric Sycamore clan hard to resist
Catey Sullivan
Pioneer Press
When Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman penned "You Can't Take It With You," they came up with a plot that paved the way for everything from "The Addams Family" to "My Big Fat Greek Wedding." Take a family of eccentrics and insert a "normal" group in their midst. And make sure that if the eccentrics fail to pass muster with the normals, dire consequences will ensue.

For the Pulitzer Prize-winning, 1936 drama "You Can't Take it With You," the loveable crazy people are all members of the Sycamore family. When daughter Alice (Lucy Carapetyan) brings home her buttoned-up boyfriend (Bernie Balbot) and his snooty high society parents (Patrick Clear, Jennifer Avery) for dinner, the evening explodes out of control. Alice wants to impress her future in-laws with her suitability, but Alice's family isn't exactly a bastion of Wasp propriety.

Opening this week at Skokie's Northlight Theatre, "You Can't Take it With You" is a rom-com that celebrates not just the young lovebirds but also the zany, individualistic Sycamore clan.

As Penny and Paul Sycamore, Penny Slusher and Brad Armacost are the loving parents who oversee an on-stage brood of of aspiring ballet dancers, xylophone players, fireworks manufacturers and a motley assortment of visitors and permanent houseguests, including a couple of G-Men determined to haul at least one member of the Sycamore family off to the hoosegow.

Armacost initially approached the play like a lot of people do, viewing it as a well-worn chestnut/warhorse that's usually trotted out for high school productions.

"Yeah, I was calling it a chestnut when we started working on it. It's easy to underestimate just how deeply intuitive it is," he says. "It might seem on the surface like this simple, zany comedy full of easy laughs. But look deeper into it. Kauffman and Hart wrote a family living between two monumentally difficult times.

"I think that Kauffman and Hart gave us a play that let the country kind of catch its breath," he continues. "The first World War was over. The Depression was everywhere. The events that led up to World War II were unfolding all over Europe. And then there's the Sycamores with all their love and all their comedy, reassuring us that things could be OK."

As Paul's wife Penny, Slusher plays a woman completely in love with her husband and fervently devoted to her career as a painter and a playwright, even though it's understood that she's absolutely terrible at both and will never have a career in either. Like the rest of the Sycamores, her viva la difference design for living helps create a household bursting with vibrance.

"Acceptance is a big theme here," says Slusher. "The Sycamores embrace their own way of living, but they don't necessarily think it's the only way of living."

About three months after "Chapatti" closed in Skokie, IL, it will transfer across the waves for a production at the famous Galway Arts Festival in Ireland.

This will be my second show for the Festival, having performed in the Galway production of Northlight's "Stella and Lou" just last  year. The festival, the city and of course the country are a sight to behold especially in July.

More about this production will be included as our departure draws nearer.