(BASKING RIDGE, NJ) -- Bernards Township Parks & Recreation and Trilogy Repertory presents You Can't Take It With You by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman across two weekends from July 31 to August 8, 2026 at Pleasant Valley Park Amphitheater in Basking Ridge. Admission is free; bring your own lawnchairs and enjoy the show! Showtime is 8:00pm.
Grandpa Vanderhof lives “just around the corner from Columbia University – but don’t go looking for it.” Grandpa is the paterfamilias of an extended, loving and eccentric family which includes a daughter who fancies herself a romance novelist; her husband, an amateur fireworks expert; a xylophone player/leftist leaflet printer; an untalented ballerina; a couple on relief; and a ballet master exiled from Soviet Russia.
When Grandpa’s granddaughter Alice, an attractive and loving girl who is still embarrassed by her family’s eccentricities, falls for her boss, Tony, a handsome scion of Wall Street, she fears that their two families – so unlike in manner, politics, and finances – will never come together. And that’s when the fireworks begin...
During a disastrous dinner party, Alice’s worst fears are confirmed. Her prospective in-laws are humiliated in a party game and the house is raided by the FBI. Frustrated and upset, Alice intends to run away to the country, until Grandpa and Co. – playing the role of Cupid – manage not only to bring the happy couple together, but to set Tony’s father straight about the true priorities in life. After all, why be obsessed by money? You can’t take it with you…
Performances take place July 31, August 1, August 6-8, 2026 at Pleasant Valley Park Amphitheater (Valley Road) in Basking Ridge, New Jersey. Admission is free, but donations are gratefully accepted.
The production is Produced by Peter Curley and Directed by Linda Viel.
The cast includes Greg Northam (Grandpa), Debbie Badel (Penny), Jose Rivera (Paul), Ross Pohling (Tony), Jessica Senger (Alice), Lizzie Dreitlein (Essie), Shail Choksi (Ed), Lauren Lipman (Reba), Nikhil Sathe (Donald), Donald Pauselius (DePinna), Becky Marshall (Gay), Cass Cochrane (Olga), Rupert Hinton (Mr. Kirby), Kathy Vaccari (Mrs. Kirby), Eric Williams (Kolenkov), and Paras Sawhney (Henderson). G-Men include Paras Sawhney, Olivia Chiaramonte, and Tyler Isherwood.
Both Kaufman and Hart drew on various aspects of their own families to create the Vanderhof clan. By the time they wrote You Can’t Take It With You in 1936, Kaufman and Hart were at the height of their powers. The team managed to find some time in Los Angeles to collaborate on a play during the summer of 1936. They rejected a political farce and worked around the relatively plotless, character-driven story of a “slightly mad family,” as Kaufman put it in a letter to his wife. “But it has a point,” he continued, “as you can see – that the way to live and be happy is just to go ahead and live, and not pay attention to the world.”
It was put together easily for its Broadway debut and remains the most successful of their comedies. You Can’t Take It With You opened on December 14, 1936 at the Booth Theater and ran 838 performances, a phenomenal number back in the 1930s. It went on to win the Pulitzer Prize, one of a handful of comedies ever to do so. A film version, directed and heavily altered by Frank Capra, starred Lionel Barrymore and Jimmy Stewart and went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1938. The comedy remains, to this day, one of the two or three most popular plays among amateur, school, and community groups. Kaufman and Hart’s basic conception of this family – and the nature of families in general – strikes at something very deep in the American character.
