Commissioner Gordon as tax evader? Pat Hingle, the well-known character actor best recognized for his recurring role in the "Batman" films, stars as the grandfather in Moss Hart and George S. Kaufman's You Can't Take It With You, running at North Carolina's Flat Rock Playhouse July 12-29.

Hingle has worked for four decades in the entertainment industry, in a career that has spanned theatre, movies and television. His most recent New York stint was as Benjamin Franklin in the Roundabout revival of 1776, with other Broadway credits including Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, J.B., Strange Interlude and That Championship Season.

In the 1936 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy, Alice Sycamore's relationship with wealthy Tony Kirby is complicated by her friendly, but eccentric family. From her bawdy, play-composing mother and amateur fireworks manufacturer father to her sister married to an anarchist while keeping company with a Russian ballet instructor, Sycamore's family is anything but normal. When Alice tries ease the shock of their craziness by setting a date for a quiet dinner party for her relations and Tony's parents, the latter show up on the wrong day when chaos still has full reign over the Sycamore house.

Joining Hingle in the cast are Stacey Harris (Alice), Scott Treadway (Tony), Jane Bushway (Penny), Steve Carlisle (Paul), Ginger Poole (Essie), Damian D. Domingue (Kolenkov), Dane Whitlock, Paige Posey and Peter Thomasson.

Tickets are $22. The Flat Rock Playhouse is located on Highway 25, three miles south of Hendersonville. For tickets, call (828) 693-0731. The Flat Rock Playhouse is on the web at http://www.flatrockplayhouse.org. -- By Christine Ehren