Kaufman and Ferber's celebrated comedy "The Royal Family" is a witty, affectionate satire of a flamboyant American theatrical dynasty widely understood to be modeled on the Barrymores. At the center of the play is the aging matriarch Fanny Cavendish, a legendary stage actress determined to keep her family's theatrical flame burning even as her children pursue their own complicated paths: her daughter Julie, torn between a return to the stage and a quieter domestic life, her swashbuckling, scandal-prone son Tony, clearly patterned on John Barrymore's off-stage exploits, and her granddaughter Gwen, weighing whether to follow the family tradition or choose ordinary happiness instead. The play captures both the glamour and the exhausting sacrifice of a life devoted entirely to the theater, mining warm comedy from the family's inability to stay away from the footlights no matter how much chaos it costs them personally.

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