Teens To Take Westhampton Stage In 1930s Classic

Imagine falling in love with the perfect man or woman. Life couldn’t be better. And all that’s standing in the way of eternal bliss is introducing the parents.

But in the play, “You Can’t Take It With You,” star-crossed lovers Alice Sycamore and Tony Kirby discover that schmoozing with the bride-to-be’s in-laws is no simple task, especially when her fiancé comes from a very wealthy and uptight family, and she’s considered to be the only sane member of hers.

A sampling of her family’s cast of characters includes a ballerina who can’t dance, an accidental playwright, an amateur illegal fireworks engineer, an aspiring xylophonist, and a milkman who made a delivery and never quite left.

This weekend, local teen actors will breathe life into those quirky characters, plus a dozen more, for audiences at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center as the culmination of its Teen Theatre Project program.

“It’s a real screwball comedy. There’s a lot of physical humor,” Julienne Penza, managing director of arts education, said at the theater last week. “Not all kids like musicals, so I had to pick a straight play that would have lots of parts. I know the day will come where we’ll have to audition and turn kids away, but I’m not ready for that yet.”

In January, 17 students, from age 11 to 17, from local areas—Center Moriches, East Moriches, Westhampton Beach, Hampton Bays and Southampton—read monologues for Ms. Penza, she said.

Melissa Smith came into the audition “blind,” never having read the Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman play, which opened at the Booth Theater in Manhattan in 1936 and played for 837 performances. It won the 1937 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

“When we did a read-through, I couldn’t stop laughing,” Melissa said from the other end of the table at the theater, Ms. Penza and four fellow actors listening in.

“It’s amazing that it was written in the 1930s, and it really holds up,” Ms. Penza added. “I remember the first time I saw it, I was really amazed. I thought it was going to be stuffy, kind of stodgy, but it’s very, very funny.”

Ms. Penza said she cast each of teen actors in a role that rivaled their personalities and would push their comfort zones, she explained.

For instance, Sam Terry, a 14-year-old freshman at Westhampton Beach High School, plays xylophonist Ed—an amateur printer whom the extroverted actor described as “pitiful,” “wimpy” and “pathetic.”

“I’ve always wanted to act all the time, I just didn’t know it,” Sam, who has been acting since sixth grade, explained. “When I was little, I wasn’t sure what I was gonna do. I did soccer for six years because my parents made me, and I hated it, and then I did tennis, and I hated it, and I did golf, and I hated it. But then I did theater, and a play, and loved it.”

Gabrielle Keller, a Westhampton Beach eighth-grader, said that she can relate. She admitted that she doesn’t have the best follow-through. Her list of dropped hobbies—among them soccer, tennis, gymnastics, student council and ballet—seems never ending, she said. The theater is the one place she happily goes without complaint, she added.

But her character in the upcoming production has been a struggle to relate to, Gabrielle pointed out. The 13-year-old is playing Gay Wellington, an alcoholic actress whom Alice’s mother, Penny—portrayed by Emma Galasso—hired to read one of her manuscripts. She’s flaky and makes “big hand gestures, kind of what Italians do with their hands,” Gabrielle said.

“When I was little, acting had always been my dream, but my mom kind of told me, ‘Not everyone makes it,’ so I was thinking about other options, like psychology,” she said. “But then I realized I wasn’t going to get anywhere with acting if I didn’t start now. So I went out for a play in fifth grade, but I was just a fish in the background. Then I realized all the school plays were musicals, and I can’t sing for my life, which is ironic because I have to sing drunkenly in the play.

“I told her, ‘The badder, the better,’” Ms. Penza said.

While the actors are still students, there’s nothing amateur about them, the director said. They’re far from being professional performers, but some have had their fair share of the limelight.

Take Emma, a 14-year-old Westhampton Beach-based actress. She’s been performing since the age of 6.

“I always say I like artificial light more than sunlight,” she said. “There’s just something about the spotlight. Once I hit high school, I knew there were bigger and better things coming for me.”

This week, the cast is in the final stretch, finishing a week-long run of 5-hour-a-day rehearsals.

Christiana Moyle, who plays the central character, Alice, said she is still grappling with one element of her role’s demands.

“Being in love,” the 15-year-old Westhampton Beach High School sophomore said. “I don’t know how to be in love, so, it’s hard to personalize.”

“Oh, but you do such a great job, though,” Ms. Penza said. “That’s surprising to me. She and the male lead have amazing chemistry. It’s really sweet. It’s one of those things you watch you just say, ‘aww.’ It’s great as an audience member because you’re really rooting for them. That’s the core of the whole show. If I miscast them and it fell flat, I don’t know what I was going to do.”

Reacting to Ms. Penza’s comment, Christiana’s cheeks blushed slightly as she smiled.

Local teens will stage “You Can’t Take It With You” on Friday, April 13, and Saturday, April 14, at 8 p.m. at the Westhampton Beach Performing Arts Center. Tickets are $15. To purchase tickets or for more information, call the box office at 288-1500 or visit whbpac.org.