By STU CLAMPITT
news@readthereporter.com
Nicole Amsler is a playwright, an occasional actress, and in recent years also a director. Most of her work directing has been with Hyperion Players, but this week she’s bringing her experience and enthusiasm to Westfield for a classic play set in 1938.
Main Street Productions (MSP) is staging You Can’t Take It With You from May 30 through June 9 at Basile Westfield Playhouse, 220 N. Union St.
“It’s about the young couple falling in love and dealing with their families,” Amsler said. “The Vanderhoff family is very eccentric. Grandpa has shunned any kind of traditional work and they all just kind of do what they want.”
According to Amsler, the story hinges around Alice, a secretary who has fallen in love with her boss. She brings him home to her quirky family and is planning to have her future in-laws, the Kirby family, come over for dinner.
“She was trying to make them look very normal and sedate and remove the printing presses and the xylophones and the snakes and all this kind of stuff,” Amsler said. “Then the Kirbys show up on the wrong night and everything goes wrong.”
Photo provided
Amsler said she chose this play because she loves the quirkiness of the Vanderhoff family and she was looking forward to directing a large cast on a stage as big as the one at Basile Westfield Playhouse.
“Nobody wants to see me on stage,” Amsler told The Reporter. “I’m much better backstage bossing people around. I liked this show – unwisely – for how big it was, because there’s such a big stage for Westfield and I could accommodate a cast of 19. I’m used to four or six, so I did like that. I’m now kind of regretting that. That’s a lot of people to get on the stage. And when I had to climb the 18-foot ladder to wallpaper my stage, I really regretted making an 18-foot-tall set. But Westfield is a fantastic place for that.”
For all that, Amsler told The Reporter she has a great cast that has come together not only for the show itself, but also to pitch in for the tall and busy-looking set. Actors have, at Amsler’s request, been bringing in pieces to add to the Vanderhoffs’ eccentric home.
“The set is fantastic,” Amsler said. “It’s huge – 18 feet tall – but because they’re so chaotic, every single wall is covered with something. I think we have 400 props and art pieces on the wall. Because I have a cast of 19, I told them all to bring me something fascinating and interesting to put on the wall. We have swords. We have flags. We have school pictures of a cast member’s grandmother graduating from high school. We have a jackalope. We have peacock fans. We have music. We have an original 1938 poster with Burns and Allen. So it’s a massive set and has a very, very fun look.”
You Can’t Take It With You is on stage from May 30 through June 9 at Basile Westfield Playhouse, 220 N. Union St. Go to BasileWestfieldPlayhouse.org/showstickets or call (317) 402-3341 for tickets.
Keep an eye out for seemingly subversive chocolates in the lobby at intermission. By that point, audiences will understand the joke.
Photo by Rob Slaven / IndyGhostLight.com