September 2010

Dear Subscriber: 

Welcome to the 44th season at The Rep! Last season, we were thrilled to celebrate a year full of drama, excitement and magic on all our stages. We are proud to have earned eight Kevin Kline Awards for our work last year—more than any other area theatre. Now, after a hot, steamy, St. Louis summer, we’re thrilled to be back with a new season full of must-see moments. Whether you’re joining us for the first time or we’re welcoming you back as a longtime member of our subscriber family, you’re really in for some extraordinary theatre with what we’ve got in store.

We’re kicking things off with maybe the best written romantic comedy for the stage, Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman’s wildly funny family farce, You Can’t Take It With You. This writing duo is responsible for some of the stage’s best-known and best-loved comic masterpieces, and while both also collaborated with other artists, their greatest successes came when working together. Kaufman and Hart’s partnership lasted only ten years but still produced awards and ticket sales that were hard to beat, along with titles that remain favorites even today. In 1929, they were brought together by producer Sam H. Harris who recognized that Hart’s spontaneity might be the perfect counterpart to Kaufman’s oppressive temperament.

At this time, Kaufman was already established as an important player in American theatre; however, he did most of his work as half of a pair, preferring to collaborate with another writer and then to direct the final work. Moss Hart, on the other hand, was a young, inexperienced writer who longed to break into the business. A meeting with Kaufman was just what he had always hoped for. In a preface to one of their play compilations, Hart remembered their first meeting as quite intimidating: The plain fact is George Kaufman did frighten me to death originally. He frightens everyone I suppose…Our original contact was for me a decidedly frightening one, and our later meetings were not helped greatly by the fact that I was prone to stare for long periods at Mr. Kaufman, inarticulate and with what I can only describe now as a generally cow-like expression about the eyes…I was, at our first meeting, coming face to face with my hero, and that makes it just about as difficult for the hero as for anybody else. I think he suspected as much, for he snarled a great deal, his manner was brusque and wintry…I left the office, however, mad with power, for I had not only met George S. Kaufman, but we were to start work the very next day.

Their first project was a rewrite of a script Hart had already started, a play lampooning Hollywood called Once in a Lifetime. When Sam Harris offered Hart the chance to work with one of his idols, he quickly recognized the long-term benefit of such an arrangement. The two started with the first page of his manuscript and from there began six months of slashing scenes, rewriting pages and for Hart, learning from one of the theatre’s true masters. In his autobiography, Act One, he recalls the value of these lessons: It is one thing to have a flair for playwriting or even a ready wit with dialogue. It is quite another to apply these gifts in the strict and demanding terms of a fully articulated play so that they emerge with explicitness, precision and form. All of this and a great deal more I learned from George Kaufman. And if it is true that no more eager disciple ever sat at the feet of a teacher, it is equally true that no disciple was ever treated with more infinite patience and understanding. Even though Kaufman was known to have his quirks and could be a bit difficult to work with, Hart’s play was soon transformed by their collaboration. With Kaufman directing, it opened on Broadway in 1930 as the smash hit of the season.

After this great initial success, the Kaufman and Hart partnership resulted in eight projects in the next ten years. Some were received better than others, but their greatest work, and arguably one of the greatest works of American drama, came in the hilarious and heartfelt You Can’t Take It With You. In May of 1936, the duo began brainstorming ideas for a new project. Kaufman suggested that they return to one of Hart’s previous inventions, a wacky but loveable family living in New York. They didn’t have a plot just yet, but instead spent their time creating memorable characters in each member of the fictional family. One was a ballerina who specialized in making candy; her oddball husband performed on the xylophone while operating a printing press; the grandfather and patriarch simply dropped out of society in order to collect snakes and listen to speeches. When they were all assembled, comedy was bound to follow.

Soon after they started work on the play, Kaufman wrote to his wife, giving a description of their newest work: You know, it’s a slightly mad family, and has to do with the daughter of the house, the only sane one. She falls in love with the son of a conventional family, and the play proper concerns her attempts to reconcile the irreconcilable elements. The family comes to dinner—arriving on the wrong night—and finds everything at its most cuckoo. It turns out that the young man himself has a streak of madness in him, and at the finish, he converts the girl to his unconventional views and they both settle down happily with her family. But it has a point, you see—that the way to live and be happy is just to go ahead and live, and not pay attention to the world. I think the play will have a nice love story and a certain tenderness, in addition to its madness. Does it sound too naïve?

She didn’t think so, and neither did their audience. In fact, a little pleasant naïveté was welcome to the downtrodden folks who’d been dealing with the Depression outside the doors of the theatre. You Can’t Take It With You opened in December of 1936 to huge public and critical acclaim. Quickly the hit of the season, the play took hold and ran for 837 performances. Soon after, it accomplished a feat unheard of for a farce when Hart and Kaufman’s loony family won them a Pulitzer Prize. The film rights were purchased for the unprecedented sum of $200,000. Directed by Frank Capra, the film won the 1938 Academy Award for Best Picture and had quite a cast, led by Lionel Barrymore who was on crutches for the whole movie. Several characters from the play do not make an appearance in the movie, and the story is slightly altered. Many have said that this was the film that made Jimmy Stewart, who played Tony, a big star. Revived on Broadway in 1965 and again in 1983, You Can’t Take It With You has been consistently popular around the country since it premiered, and there is a Broadway revival scheduled for later this season.

I am thrilled to direct this comic masterpiece and to welcome back a design team who can truly do it justice. Longtime Rep Scenic Designer John Ezell (The Diary of Anne Frank) will return to work his magic and create a fitting home for the wonderful Sycamores. Costume Designer Elizabeth Covey (The Diary of Anne Frank) is back to outfit a cast of wildly different characters while Peter E. Sargent (The Fantasticks) handles the lights and Rep Resident Sound Designer Rusty Wandall takes care of the sound.

On stage you’ll find a large cast full of familiar faces as well as newcomers. The Sycamore clan is headed by longtime St. Louis favorite Joneal Joplin (The Fantasticks) as Grandpa Vanderhof. His family includes Carol Schultz (The Clean House) as Penny and Tony Campisi as Paul. Their children are Stephanie Cozart (The Crucible, The Syringa Tree) as the spirited Essie, Jamie LaVerdiere as her wacky husband Ed and Amelia McClain as Alice. Not exactly related, but members of the family nonetheless are Rachel Leslie as the housekeeper Rheba and Scott Whitehurst as her boyfriend and household helper Donald, Scott Schafer (The Fantasticks) as fireworks fanatic Mr. De Pinna, Anderson Matthews (Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) as the eccentric Russian ballet instructor Boris Kolenkhov and Susie Wall (A Christmas Story) as tipsy actress Gay Wellington. The dinner guests are the Kirbys, a wealthy Wall Street family, including Jeffrey Hayenga (Amadeus) as Mr. Kirby, Barbara Kingsley as Mrs. Kirby and Benjamin Eakeley as their love-struck son Tony. Todd Lawson (Secret Order) is the pesky representative of the Federal Government and Ms. Kingsley returns in the third act as the Grand Duchess Olga Katrina, who can cook blintzes to order.

This is a show we have wanted to do for several seasons, and we are so pleased to be able to open with it. In our topsy-turvy world, the gentle insanity of this collection of characters is a kind of welcome relief from the daily news. There are many laughs, and maybe even more importantly, it is also full of heart and hope. Grandpa Vanderhof is quite clear that life is wonderful and to enjoy it you need to relax, breathe and embrace all the wonders that are available to everyone. He has a view of life that makes more sense than one might imagine. His family may engage in some oddball pursuits, but they are more in touch with the true meaning of happiness than most could hope for. Even the proper Kirbys come away from their "dinner" with the Sycamores a little better for the experience. This play has a kind of magical charm that we rarely see in contemporary writing. I’m sure you and your family will enjoy your time with the Sycamores and maybe even find some wonderful new hobbies in which to indulge.

We are all so pleased that you have joined us for a very exciting and varied season of theatre-going.
Welcome.

See you at the theatre,

Steven Woolf 

Artistic Director

New York Report: The new Broadway season will be getting underway later in September. The tickets for a very limited run of The Merchant of Venice starring Al Pacino have just gone on sale. This production got stunning reviews and if you are going to be in New York in the fall you may want to check it out. This was a big hit in Central Park in the summer. (Telecharge.com is handling tickets).

Bonus Offer: Looking for a good place to dine before your show? Check our website for the wide variety of great eateries near the theatre. One of our favorites, CJ Muggs, is offering Rep patrons a special treat. Just bring in a ticket stub from any Rep show and receive a complimentary glass of house wine. This offer is good all season long. Thanks CJ Muggs! (Contact CJ Muggs for complete offer details.)

Big News: We are excited to announce that Lidia Bastianich, Italian chef extraordinaire and host of the Emmy-nominated TV series Lidia’s Italy, will join us at this year’s St. Louis Food and Wine Experience on January 29 and 30, 2011. Tickets for this event go on sale later this fall and will be available at Schnucks stores, at The Rep’s Box Office or online at www.repstl.org.