Characters shine in production of 'You Can't Take It With You'

I've been waiting for this. Here's an excerpt from the Baton Rouge Advocate's review of my first professional show:

This timeless Pulitzer- and Oscar-winning comedy by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman runs through May 8 at the Reilly Theatre on the LSU campus. With a story loosely resembling a comedic variation of "Romeo and Juliet," the show has the crazy, loveable Sycamores playing impromptu hosts when their soon-to-be in-laws arrive unexpectedly for dinner.

Still, it's not the plot but the wonderful characters created by a talented cast that makes this show so entertaining. Under the capable hands of associate artistic director John Dennis, there's great chemistry, perfect timing and a whole lot of fun going on.

Broadway actor Clayton Corzatte takes center stage with a commanding, credible, endearing performance as Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, who raises snakes and manages to successfully evade paying income taxes. He earned extra kudos from Sunday's matinee audience for an impromptu line he injected when a microphone hummed annoyingly for a couple of minutes. "Kind of noisy in here tonight," he ad-libbed.

West End veteran Christine St. John and professional actors Nick Ericksonand Cristine McMurdo-Wallis inject warm blood into the quirky characters of Penelope and Paul Sycamore and a Russian grand duchess, respectively.

Swine Palace's tradition of mixing professional actors with faculty and students of various levels of experience continues to provide a rich experience in which everyone rises to a bar of high expectations.

Click here for the rest of the review.

And don't expect to find anything about me in particular--I'm only onstage for four or five minutes. What's cool about that, however, is that most of my brief scene is played with the above mentioned Clayton Corzatte, which is waaay cool: I'm an IRS agent who comes to find out why they're not paying taxes, essentially a straight-man for Corzatte to bounce jokes off of, and he bounces them exceedingly well. Indeed, this is a really fantastic production overall. Every actor in the cast is great, and it makes me imagine that this must be what it's like to play on a Steely Dan album or with Frank Zappa. It's so incredibly wild to know that I'm working with so much talent.

I'm loving life right now.


From Act II, before all hell breaks loose.

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