Despite the fact that its first performance took place more than 70 years ago, George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's comic masterpiece "You Can't Take it With You" bears its age quite well. Its legacy has spread to a new generation as the youngsters of Joseph Donia's theater arts department at Thousand Oaks High School are presenting it this month at the high school's Performing Arts Center.

First produced in 1936, the show won a Pulitzer Prize in 1937 and ran for 837 performances on Broadway. The 1938 film version, directed by Frank Capra and starring James Stewart and Jean Arthur, won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

The story concerns the Sycamores, a family of goodintentioned social misfits, each of whom has a passion for something that they are not very good at.

The father, Paul, is enamored with homemade fireworks that always seem to misfire. His wife, Penny, took to writing melodramatic plays after a typewriter was mistakenly delivered to their home. Daughter Essie makes candies and has been taking ballet lessons for eight years but shows no signs of grace or improvement. Her husband, Ed, plays xylophone (badly) and runs a home printing press, with which he disperses circulars quoting Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Grandpa quit his 9-to-5 job to pursue his hobbies of raising snakes and attending commencement exercises. Together, these odd activities constitute a rather eccentric clan, happy in what they are doing because they are doing what makes them happy.

Enter the straightlaced Kirby family, whose patriarch, Anthony, is a successful and stuffy Wall Street executive. When Anthony's son falls in love with the Sycamore's second daughter, Alice (sweetly played by Caitlin Arndt), it sets up a meeting of the families for dinner, during which you sense that sparks will be flying, and not just because of the fireworks in the basement.

If this scenario sounds familiar, it is because "You Can't Take it With You" is the grandfather of the modern-day sitcom, in which a quirky but lovable family takes on the dilemmas of "the real world," with everything working itself out in the end. Every television comedy, from "All in the Family" to "The Addams Family," owes a debt to this landmark play, and the play's story line has even been represented in movies ("Meet the Parents") and on Broadway ("La Cage Aux Folles"). As difficult as it is to portracharacters of various ages, thyoung cast did quite well. Naturally, they don't have access to thmore expensive props, makeup

and sound effects that professional companies have, so for thpyrotechnic displays involving Paul Sycamore's experiments in the basement, flashing lights and offstage sound effects had to suffice. The comfortable New York

suburban set, however, was everbit as professional looking as anything on a major theater stage.

As for the cast, Laura Zazuetis a perfectly perky Essie, practicing her stodgy ballet steps, totally optimistic about her progresall the while. In the few lines thahe had, Ryan Brodsky was verfunny as Essie's Russian balleinstructor, Boris Kolenkhov.

Other highlights include Taylor Bailey as the grand patriarch of the family, Grandpa Martin Vanderhof, and Kristina Bailey athe snooty Mrs. Kirby, with henose in the air and a cultured "how-dare-you" accent. "You Can't Take It With Youis a difficult show to perform duto the large cast that is often alonstage at the same time, with thcharacters' lines shooting back and forth as noisily as the fireworks in the basement. To their credit, the cast's timing was impeccable, and there were no slipups, even when the inevitable hooting from their peers in the audience took place.

With television saturated with reality shows and lame sitcoms, it's wonderful that high school students not only are exposed to classics from the stage but that they can pull it off so well. The genius of Kaufman and Hart's play is that, even after 70 years, the madcap doings of the Sycamore family can be so relevant in the 21st century. Their timeless message remains constant: Do what makes you happy.

"You Can't Take It With You" plays at 7:30 p.m. through Nov. 22. Tickets, $7, are available at the high school box office, 2323 Moorpark Road.