Special delivery

What time is it? What day is it? What year is it? What does it matter? It doesn’t. Not in the zany world of You Can’t Take It With You. It’s a world where an ice delivery man can come to the door one day and end up staying eight years. A world where the accidental delivery of a typewriter seven years before leads to a decision to begin writing plays. It’s a world of ease, comfort and the pleasure of living in the here and now and letting tomorrow sort itself out.

The plot focuses on Tony Kirby and Alice Sycamore, a young couple in love. Tony comes from an upper class, uptight business family and Alice from a family of eccentrics who march to the beat of their own drums—or xylophones as the case may be. The befuddled hilarity ensues when the two families come together for dinner … on the wrong night.

Kim McCann directs this classic play by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, the first of City Theater’s four main-stage productions being offered this season. As she so often does, McCann has assembled a diverse and talented cast that provides many wonderful moments, ones that easily can be lost in large-cast productions.Unfortunately, the production doesn’t sustain its momentum through to curtain. It peaks in the second act, and the third act seems like an uninspired, obligatory epilogue rather than a well-thought-out conclusion. Luckily, McCann seems to salvage what she can of the scene with her usual flair.

You Can’t Take It With You is a quirky, fun production of classic theater and has moments that will have audiences in stitches. Some may even come to see the show and end up moving in for the entire run. Maybe.