Lucy Gauvin, Lesli Weston, Kim Craig, Rochel Urist and Lindsey Ford star in the Friends of the Michigan League's dinner-theater production of "You Can't Take it With You."

The Friends of the Michigan League — a group of local volunteers and University of Michigan alumni who work to maintain and support this historical campus center for women’s social, cultural, and recreational activities — are staging a fundraising dinner theater production of George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart’s Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, “You Can’t Take it With You.”

“When choosing this play, an important consideration for us was the similarity of the years of Great Depression and the years 2009 and ’10,” said director Nancy Heusel. “We’re not in a depression now, we’re in a recession, but so many things have been happening that were also happening during the Great Depression — there’s suspicion of Wall Street, the banks, the government. … The play was written 1936, in the midst of all that, and people needed to laugh. We still do.”

The classic comedy unfolds as a young woman with a wildly eccentric family brings home her fiancée. When the young man’s buttoned-up parents arrive at his future in-laws' house a day before expected, a hilarious clash of lifestyles and philosophies ensues.

“The play turns America inside out,” said Heusel. “One family is all about materialism — that it’s who you are and who you know that matter. The other family bases its happiness on being independent and free. But it’s all explored with comedy, and it doesn’t preach too much.”

Of course, other madcap, escapist comedies made people laugh during the Great Depression. Why did “You Can’t” endure?

“Because it’s a gentle comedy,” said Heusel. “There’s farce in it, but it’s grounded in these people who — though they’re kind of screwballs in our world, there’s an order there. The whole idea is that these people are playful people, and that this is a creative and healthy thing, not a childish thing. And people see that.”

Thursday’s performance offers dessert only before the show, while Friday, Saturday and Sunday’s staging will feature a full dinner beforehand, catered by the Michigan League.

The Friends organization formed in 1996, and “You Can’t” marks the 14th dinner theater fundraiser show that the group has produced. The Friends don’t hold open auditions for the shows, but Heusel — who directs church school at St. Andrews, and works with Greenhills students on a theater production each fall — finds performers among those in the organization, current U-M students, past show participants, and more.

So casting “You Can’t” hasn't posed that much of a challenge — but finding space for all the performers on a small stage has been.

“It’s a portable stage,” said Heusel. “We have a little more room this year than we did before, but there are 15 people in this play. I think they’re all on stage together only once, but I’ve just been thinking, ‘Well, they have so much chaos around them, that if we can organize that chaos a little bit, we’ll be OK.’”

Jenn McKee is the entertainment digital journalist for AnnArbor.com. Reach her at jennmckee@annarbor.com or 734-623-2546, and follow her on Twitter @jennmckee.