PREVIEW: Southwick Players stage a comedy

PULITZER Prize-winning comedy You Can't Take It With You will be performed at Southwick's Barn Theatre.

Southwick Players' latest performance centres around the Vanderhof/Sycamore clan and is set in the family's large New York house.

If at first the family seems mad, it is not long before the realisation hits that if they are mad, then the rest of the world is madder.

Grandpa Martin Vanderhof (Roly Petts) is the family's patriarch, who long ago made his peace with the world '“ if not the Internal Revenue Service.

Then there is his daughter, the cheerful yet unpublished playwright Penelope Sycamore (Fiona Cameron), and her husband Paul (Brian Gill), who happily manufactures fireworks in the cellar.

The third generation consists of the couple's daughters and son-in-law, the optimistic but inept ballerina Essie Carmichael (Amy White), and her husband Ed (Andy Hutchison), who has a passion for printing presses* and xylophones, and Alice (Louise Yeo), a Wall Street secretary who seems to be the only normal person in the household.

Into the whirlwind of activity comes Tony Kirby (Duncan Vicat-Brown) '“ Alice's boyfriend, the son of her boss, and the epitome of normality and success in the world of business.