Anna Shapiro to Direct YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU Broadway Revival This Fall

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 timeless Pulitzer Prize-winning play YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU, previewing November 5, 2010 and opening November 14 at a Broadway theatre (to be determined), it has been announced by the show's producers Elizabeth Ireland McCann and Joey Parnes.

Not seen on Broadway in 27 years, YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU will originate at Boston's Huntington Theatre Company, September 24 to October 24 pending conclusion of negotiations. The Huntington is under the direction of Artistic Director Peter Dubois and Managing Director Michael Maso.

This production marks the second time that Ms. McCann and Mr. 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.

The ensemble casting for YOU CAN'T TAKE IT WITH YOU is to be announced shortly.

Moss and Kaufman's masterwork 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 and remains a masterpiece, one of the most carefully-drawn, fully-realized depictions of family, honesty, love and human nature ever written for the stage.

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, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle 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 Mr. 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.

Elizabeth Ireland McCann has won several Tony Awards in her storied career as a producer on Broadway including Edward Albee's "The Goat," "Copenhagen," "A View from the Bridge," "The Elephant Man," "Amadeus" and "Nicholas Nickleby." Her productions of plays by Mr. Albee include the revival of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?," the Pulitzer Prize-winning "Three Tall Women,"
"The Play About the Baby," and "Beckett/Albee." Other recent productions on Broadway include "Hair," "Passing Strange," "Butley" and "Well."

Joey Parnes has served on numerous productions including: the Tony Award-winning "Hair," "Equus," "Passing Strange," Butley," "Well," "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" "The Goat" and "Copenhagen," and the Off-Broadway productions of "Beckett/Albee" and "Tuesdays with Morrie," "The Tempest," and "Noise/Funk" while at The Public Theater.

Over a dozen Huntington-affiliated shows have played Broadway, including the current revival of "Present Laughter," nine plays by August Wilson, "Hedda Gabler" with Kate Burton, Simon Gray's "Butley" with Nathan Lane (both directed by Nicholas Martin), Theresa Rebeck's "Mauritius," and the Tony Award-winning Alfred Hitchcock's "The 39 Steps."