`Can't Take it With You' a welcome charmer.

Byline: Paul Kolas

COLUMN: THEATER REVIEW

WORCESTER - The gently insistent bohemian charms of Worcester County Light Opera Company's production of "You Can't Take It With You" were hard to resist on Friday evening. No, make that impossible to resist. Written at the tail end of the Great Depression by the febrile writing team of Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, what must have seemed in 1936 a populist rebuttal to hard times still captivates with its message of living life on one's own terms rather than those dictated by society.

Oh, if only it were that easy, but somehow Martin Vanderhof (Dave Glanville) has managed a way to do it for 35 years, enjoying a life of catching snakes, playing darts, attending Columbia University commencements and evading the IRS for 23 of those years.

Lovingly called "Grandpa" by the oddball extended family he presides over, Martin prefers "being happy" to the "jungle" of the business rat race he left behind. His daughter, Penelope Sycamore (Cathy O'Brien), became a would-be playwright of provocatively themed plays simply because a typewriter was delivered to her home by mistake. Her husband, Paul (Gary Swanson), entertains himself in the basement making fireworks. One of their daughters, Essie Carmichael (Katie Lee), glides through the house on tiptoe, fancying herself a budding world class ballet dancer (she's not), while her xylophone playing husband, Ed (Hans Foy), has been putting his printing machine to unwittingly subversive use. Penny and Paul's other daughter, Alice (Emma Ostrow), is in love with the boss's son, Tony Kirby (Eric Butler).

Tony's father, Anthony Sr. (Mike Casey), is a Wall Street tycoon who doesn't bat an eye at spending $10,000 for an orchid. Alice is anxious for her "strange" family to make a good impression on the Kirby's when they're invited for dinner later in the week, and when they show up a day early, the contrast between stiff upper class snobbery and free-wheeling eccentricity yields richly comic dividends.

Mrs. Kirby (Alicia Manley) shrieks at the snake aquarium that was supposed to be hidden for the occasion. Essie's ballet teacher, Boris Kolenkhov (Rob Lynds), body slams Mr. Kirby to the floor in a wrestling move promoting the twin virtues of sound mind sound body. Penny's word associative parlor game involving words like "lust" and "sex" unlocks embarrassingly hidden feelings in the Kirbys. All Alice can do is cringe and tell Tony things can't possibly work between his world and hers. Or can it?

What does work remarkably well in this handsomely staged show is Mark Goodney's confident direction. He never pushes the gags or situational caprice beyond their limits, trusting the play and his excellent cast to envelop us with wit, whimsy and affection.

His splendidly conceived set is a marvel of cluttered and quaint coziness. In a show filled with memorable performances, Glanville plays Vanderhof with such easy assurance, you willingly accept his logic for refusing to pay income tax, and applaud him when he tells Mr. Kirby how to be happy. He's a "zany" patriarch whose outlook on life is, regrettably, far more easily imagined than achieved.

O'Brien's Penny is a woman of amusingly regal self-absorption, a trait also nicely embodied in Lee's Essie, prancing around the stage in her ballet slippers in a semi-trance. Swanson is quietly empathetic as her husband, Paul. Foy displays adolescent enthusiasm as Ed. Ostrow and Butler imbue Alice and Tony with tender sentiment. You root for them to overcome the ideological and fiscal gap between families.

Casey does a good job of thawing Mr. Kirby from imperious mogul to a regular guy. Manley etches Mrs. Kirby with frosty perfection. Lynds makes a convincingly large-hearted Russian ballet teacher as Kolenkhov.

Rick Munnis is a beaming presence as the toga-wearing Mr. De Pinna, the former ice man who's taken up residence in the Sycamore household for the last 15 years.

Other standouts are Lisa Mielnicki and Kristen King as Rheba and Donald, the household servants, Barbara St. Pierre as the tipsy "actress" Gay Wellington, and Barbara Weihrauch as the "Russian Countess" Olga.

"You Can't Take It With You" remains a welcomed respite from sobering reality.

`You Can't Take It With You'

* * *-1/2

By Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman, directed by Mark Goodney. Presented by Worcester County Light Opera Company at the WCLOC Playhouse, 21 Grand View Ave., Worcester. Performances on Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m., Sunday at 2 p.m., through Feb. 24. Tickets: $16. For reservations call [phone] or visit www.WCLOC.com.

With Dave Glanville, Cathy O'Brien, Gary Swanson, Emma Ostrow, Eric Butler, Katie Lee, Hans Foy, Lisa Mielnicki, Kristen King, Rick Munnis, Rob Lynds, Barbara St. Pierre, Mike Casey, Alicia Manley and Barbara Weihrauch.