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Act 1, Scene 1

• "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; 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...

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