You Can't Take It with You

You Can't Take It with You Summary | Act 1, Scene 1 Summary

You Can't Take It With You is a romantic comedy about Alice Sycamore and Tony Kirby, two young people trapped between the eccentricities and foibles of their families in New York City in 1936.

The play opens in the cluttered and chaotic living room of Grandpa Vanderhof. It is obvious that this room serves more than one purpose with its eclectic elements, including live snakes, a xylophone, and a printing press. The characters are introduced as they come in and out of this room, beginning with Penny Sycamore, Grandpa Vanderhof's fifty-year-old daughter who is typing away at one of the many plays she is writing.

Penny's daughter, Essie Carmichael, is a twenty-nine-year-old frustrated ballerina who wears ballet slippers at all times and is currently making candy because her husband, Ed, has taken orders for the sweets that need to be filled today. Rheba, the family's Negro maid, enters the room to check on the dinner count and gets waylaid by Penny, who consults Rheba on the plot of the play she is working on.

Soon after, Paul Sycamore, Penny's husband, emerges from the basement where he and a friend, Mr. DePinna, have been experimenting with the production of fireworks. Ed Carmichael, Essie's husband, is the most aimless of the household and periodically plays notes on the xylophone so that Essie can dance. Ed also works on the printing press and asks Rheba about the dinner menu so that he may begin the typesetting. Soon after, Rheba's boyfriend Donald arrives with flies to feed the snakes in the solarium.

Finally, the patriarch of this zany family, Grandpa Vanderhof, comes home from attending a commencement ceremony at Columbia University. Grandpa does not know any of the graduates, but he attends as many commencement exercises as possible because he enjoys them.

Alice Sycamore, Penny's daughter, arrives home from work, where she is a secretary at a Wall Street firm. Alice is the most normal family member, and she adores her family in spite of their quirkiness. Penny comments on the new dress Alice is wearing, the second new dress this week, and Alice reveals that she is going out to dinner with Tony Kirby, a vice president at the firm where she works. Tony is fresh out of Cambridge University in England and also the son of the firm's owner. Alice really likes Tony and asks her family to please behave tonight. She goes upstairs to get ready for her date.

The sound of the doorbell prompts Alice to call out to see if the visitor is Tony. Penny answers the door, assuming that the man standing there is Alice's date. The man is Mr. Henderson from the Internal Revenue Service, and he has come to speak to Grandpa. Apparently, Grandpa has never paid any income taxes and has not responded to the government's letters regarding the issue. Mr. Henderson's job is to explain the situation to Grandpa.

Grandpa can see no need for his money to be put to something that he cannot see, and he challenges Mr. Henderson to provide some evidence of where the funds will go. The operation of the federal government is not a good enough reason for Grandpa to part with his money, and Mr. Henderson leaves in a huff when he can make no progress with the cantankerous old man. An explosion from the basement is enough to scare Mr. Henderson out of the apartment without another word.

Passing Mr. Henderson in the hall is Mr. Kolenkhov, Essie's Russian ballet instructor, who has come for dinner with the Sycamore family. Grandpa says a poignant prayer before dinner asking God to allow the family to continue living in the manner it has become used to.