You Can't Take It With You: Shapiro to direct

Anna Shapiro will return to Broadway for the first time since winning the 2007 Tony Award for her direction of 'August: Osage County' when she directs Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's Pulitzer Prize-winning play You Can't Take It With You, previewing 5 Nov 2010 and opening 14 Nov at a Broadway theatre to be determined.

Not seen on Broadway in 27 years, You Can't Take It With You will originate at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company, 24 Sep to 24 Oct pending conclusion of negotiations. The Huntington is under the direction of Artistic Director Peter DuBois and Managing Director Michael Maso.

The cast for You Can't Take It With You is to be announced shortly.

You Can't Take It With You portrays the colorful, freethinking Sycamore family and the mayhem that ensues when their daughter's fiancé brings his conservative, straight-laced parents to the Sycamore residence for dinner on the wrong night. Literal and figurative fireworks erupt over the course of the evening in a household that appears to be a madhouse but proves, in fact, to be the opposite: a sanctuary from the lunacies of the outside world.

A critical and popular success when it debuted at the Booth Theatre in 1936, You Can't Take It With You was last seen on Broadway over a quarter century ago in 1983. The play received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1937.

About the upcoming revival, Anna Shapiro says, "It's a personal thrill to be involved in the revival of You Can't Take It With You. There is so much joy and laughter in the play and for me, right now, so much meaning. Because it's not just an American confection - it isn't - it's an American masterpiece. At its core it's about the actual practicality of being able to look within one's family - not without -- for guidance, love, acceptance and happiness in the rat race with all the rats."

Together, Kaufman and Hart wrote seven plays including 'Once in a Lifetime,' 'Merrily We Roll Along,' 'The Fabulous Invalid' and 'The Man Who Came to Dinner.'

Anna Shapiro won the Tony Award for 'August: Osage County,' having directed the play's premiere at Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre and winning the Jefferson Award for her direction of the Letts' play. Her numerous other credits include 'Iron' at Manhattan Theatre Club, Jon Robin Baitz's 'A Fair Country' at the Huntington Theatre Company and Bruce Norris' 'The Pain and the Itch' at Steppenwolf.

This production marks the second time that Producers McCann and Parnes have transferred a show from the Huntington to Broadway, having done so previously in the fall of 2007 with 'Butley' starring Nathan Lane. The producers also transferred the acclaimed revival of 'Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?' starring Kathleen Turner and Bill Irwin from its Boston tryout at the Wilbur Theatre to Broadway in 2005.