“You Can’t Take It With You”

Went Friday night to the Regent University production of Kaufman and Hart’s 1936 comedy, “You Can’t Take It With You.”  As usual, Regent’s acting and production values were top notch:  Does any theater company design better sets?

The experience was enjoyable but only mildly humorous because, I think, the theme is definitely dated.  The play describes the collision between members of the wildly eccentric Vanderhof family, who live to have fun regardless of social expectations, and the uptight, straight-laced Kirbys, who live to work and live up to the standards of their class.  It’s a comedy so in the end, of course, the Kirbys come around and go the free-spirited, bohemian route.

A valuable lesson (or at least diversion) in Depression-era 1936 but out of place in the nothing-but-fun second decade of the twenty-first century.  (See Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death.)  The data from Chris Smith's Souls in Transition shows that today’s emerging adults (and, I suspect, most Americans who came of age in the 1960s and thereafter), live for little more than fun with commitment to work seen as a means to socializing, not an end in itself.  YCTIWY opens a window to a past that barely exists in America except in memory; the play hasn‘t aged well.

Missing from both YCTIWY and today is a notion of vocation.  My colleague Mike Schutt has written an excellent book about this Christian teaching in Redeeming Law (see here).  His blog is a good place to learn more about how the Christian tradition frames work and play in light of a Sabbath shalom (promised and delivered) in Christ.  Living either for only work or play misses the bigger picture: one is a calling of God; the other pictures the feast of the Lamb and his people to which we can look forward.  Both are oriented toward something more than ourselves and social expectations.