You Can’t Take It With You Imagine you didn’t have to worry about paying rent or bills, or how to afford groceries or gas. You live in a house where anything goes, and everyone is free to follow their bliss. What would you do with your time? Assume it’s 1936, and you can’t binge-watch shows on Netflix or kill time on Buzzfeed quizzes. Meet the Sycamore family, breezily occupied in their own artsy and zany pastimes despite the troubled times in which they live. All they ask of God in a pre-meal blessing is “to just go along and be happy in our own sort of way,” which apparently includes never paying income taxes. Yes, they’re all rather insular and a bit cheerfully crazy.

Except for Alice (Briana Young), who is unusual in the family: She has a job. She’s also in love with a distressingly normal guy, VP of the company she works for and the boss’ son, Tony (Gil Eplan-Frankel). The night Tony’s straight-laced parents come over for dinner at the Sycamore house could have inspired similar meetings in films like The Birdcage and My Big Fat Greek Wedding if couples who come from wildly different families didn’t fall in love so often as to be easy fodder for romantic comedies. And this romantic comedy is a classic of American theater. It’s considered one of the most popular plays of all time in a country where the pursuit of happiness is so fundamental that it’s considered a human right equal to life and liberty. 

Will Alice and Tony’s love prevail, or will Alice’s nutty family ruin everything? The plot almost doesn’t matter. Director Justin Anderson (associate director of the Aurora Theatre) points out that the idea of “finding your happy” is what matters here, that happiness “isn’t a destination; it’s a journey.” And once the audience enters the wacky lives of the Sycamore clan, they’re on the journey, too. There are some uncomfortable ways in which the script, with some distressingly clichéd ethnic representations, has not aged so well. It will be intriguing to see how Anderson’s casting choices for some of the roles (like the maid and her boyfriend) brush off some of the cobwebs from the story. 

You Can’t Take It With You (by Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman) is presented by University Theatre at the Fine Arts Theatre in the Fine Arts Building Nov. 6 and 11–14 at 8 p.m. and Nov. 8 and 15 at 2:30 p.m. Tickets are $16 or $12 for students, and available at 706-542-4400 or drama.uga.edu/box-office.

Middletown In 2013, the New York Times called Middletown a “delicate, moving and wry amble along the collective road to nowhere.” For those who love to smile in the face of darkness (fans of Nihilist Arby’s, for example), they will recognize and even celebrate the moments of cheerful despair that color occasional interactions between Middletown’s denizens. They are all of us in miniature—fear, anxiety and bleakness notwithstanding. Along with two of the characters we will meet, we’re all simultaneously just “yahoos on vacation” in a quiet kind of normal need “for serious truth.” 

The truth of Middletown, an eloquent portrayal of the joy and pain of living inspired by Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, may be that we are so very lucky to be here at all, as another character puts it. As with You Can’t Take It With You, it asks what we are living for, this time in a postmodern way undoubtedly intertwined with the present-day mood. It’s not escapist optimism, but rather beautifully wrought language that articulates the unbearable heaviness of being, along with the hope that perhaps life is beautiful after all. 

Middletown (by Will Eno) is presented by The Thalian Blackfriars in the Cellar Theatre of the Fine Arts Building Nov. 9–10 at 7 p.m. Tickets are $5 at the door. For more information, visit ugathalian.wix.com/blackfriars.

Mary Poppins She’s no Supernanny fixing a dysfunctional family by whipping everyone into shape with her militant tactics, but a creature of free-spirited magic who arrives to transform lives through fantasy and song-and-dance numbers. Mary Poppins is a dream come true for these unhappy kids with a workaholic dad. All it takes is a little supercalifragilisticexpialidocious to save the day and turn a grumpy dad into a happy jokester. Family fun for everyone who lives to laugh.

Mary Poppins: The Musical (by Cameron Mackintosh) is presented by Athens Creative Theatre at the Morton Theatre Thursday, Nov. 12–Saturday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 14 at 2 p.m. and Sunday, Nov. 15 at 3 p.m. Tickets are $15, $12 for seniors, students and children, or free for ACC employees with ID. Call 706-613-3771 or visit mortontheatre.com.

The Merry Widow: If opera makes you happy, UGA Opera Theatre is collaborating with the University Chorus, the UGA Symphony Orchestra, and UGA’s Dance Department on a semi-staged, concert style, English language performance of the famously cheerful operetta The Merry Widow. A young widow in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a husband, at least that’s what the crafty men of Paris seem to believe as they scheme to marry her in order to keep her vast wealth local for the sake of the banks. Madame Glawari is no one’s fool, however, and sees through them all. She also still loves the man who couldn’t marry her when she was single and penniless. Will she find a husband who will make her happy and please the bankers? Enjoy the romantic fun plus music you’ll keep humming long after the curtain goes down.

The Merry Widow (by Franz Lehár) is presented by UGA Opera Theatre at Hodgson Concert Call Nov. 5–6 at 8 p.m. as part of UGA’s Spotlight on the Arts festival. (See Art Notes). Tickets are $18, $5 for UGA students, and available at 706-542-4400 or pac.uga.edu.