Albert Lea High School’s teenage actors are going back in time this spring with the production of “You Can’t Take It With You,” a play about an eccentric family clashing in more ways than one with a wealthy, snobby family.

The Hollywood film version of the stage play “You Can’t Take It With You” won Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1938 and director Frank Capra won Best Director. The play was written by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart and won the 1937
Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The play is set in 1936, and Albert Lea High School director Curtis Smith, substituting for teacher Molly Grimmius, said the students have had to get used to life before cellphones, microwave ovens, computers and TV sets. The students wear clothes from the period and get familiar with some olden ways of doing things.

“People will remember back when they had to boil water to make hot dogs,” Smith said.

He said the play is geared for grown-ups and is perfect for a date night.

“We’ll bring you in and help you forget about your own problems,” Smith said.

Logan Petersen plays the grandfather who hasn’t paid taxes in 24 years because, as the character said, the government wouldn’t know what to do with it anyway.

Is it difficult for a teenager to play an old man?

“It’s easier than I thought it would be,” he said.

Petersen said even though there are more ways to communicate now, he thinks people were closer back in the 1930s.

“There was more togetherness than now,” he said.

Solveig Lange plays Penelope Sycamore, a terrible playwright and mother who tries to make everyone happy.

She said Penelope is spry and energetic, probably about 50 and perhaps moves faster the Lange does as a teen.

She said the most challenging part of being in a high school play is forgetting the real life aspects of the other actors. She said she has to remind herself that they are characters. She likes the setting of the play.

“It’s interesting to learn a lot of social history and slang terms of the day,” Lange said.

 

Cast:

Penelope Sycamore Solveig Lange

Essie Carmichael Rika Boorsma

Rheba Hanna Kingstrom

Paul Sycamore Matt Bera

Mr. De Pinna Ryan Nelson

Ed Carmichael Jens Lange

Donald Josh Englin

Martin Vanderhof Logan Petersen

Alice Sycamore Anna Englin

Wilbur C. Henderson Alec Wendelboe

Tony Kirby Connor Larson

Boris Kolenhhov Tyler Egge

Gay Wellington Audrey Laite

Anthony Kirby Brayden Boettcher

Miriam Kirby Emily Wangen

The Grand Duchess Bailey Ford

G-Man 1 Ali Radke

G-Man 2 Claire Jones