Harvey

by Mary Chase, Directed by Alan Bailey
Commonweal Theatre (June 6, 2008)

Harvey is a play that asks its audience to reconsider the assumptions about what is normal and what is important in the day-to-day life of business and society. Its main character, Elwood P. Dowd, joins a long line of outcasts whose life outside of the mainstream stands as an indictment of the status quo: beats, hippis, punks, and freegans, for example. Dowd’s philosophy is simple and to the point: he’d rather be pleasant than normal. He refuses to conform to the social climbing efforts of his sister, Veta Louise, the financial world of his attorney, Judge Omar Gaffney, or the ponderings of renowned psychiatrist William Chumley. Dowd’s social resistance remains quite social and seems restricted to drinking in as many bars and clubs as possible with his pal, a giant invisible rabbit named Harvey and whoever he can get to join him.

Harvey follows what has become a staple Hollywood formula. A simple, childlike person allows those around him or her to come to terms with what is really important in life. And in case the audience has missed the message, a cab driver comes on stage in the last moments of the play to sum it up. Rain Man, Forest Gump and Stuart Little fit the same mold. It’s a feel-good formula, but Harvey doesn’t seem to have much fresh to add to the formula.

To be fair, Harvey pre-dates Forest Gump and the others by a couple of generations and may well remain a classic while the others fade. Written in the 1940s when the middle class and its values were being stretched to include the returning GIs and their quickly growing families, Harvey’s long run on Broadway, Pulitzer Prize, and the blockbuster movie starring James Stewart certainly suggest that it captured something essential and important in the 40s and 50s. Unfortunately, Harvey seems less like a challenge to the insipid values that inform our work and social life today and more of an interesting trip down memory lane.

While the story isn’t compelling, the acting is. It’s simply fun to watch Adrienne Sweeney as Dowd’s Sister compulsively and increasingly caress her fur stole as the tension rises and Stela Burdt, Dowd’s niece whose social life has been compromised by the imaginary rabbit, preen and flirt with her cat-eye glasses. Hal Cropp is perfect as the famous Freudian doctor, who, like most of the characters, suffers from his own neurosis. Mary Chase surely had fun tweaking the psychiatric establishment.

Eric Bunge’s “aw shucks” Elwood P. Dowd feels like Jimmy Stewart, which is probably necessary for this play. (I’ve never seen the Jimmy Steward movie, but the intermission buzz suggests that Bunge played the part just like Stewart.) The romantic tension between nurse Ruth Kelly (Jill Underwood) and the self-absorbed junior Psychiatrist Lymann Sanderson (Scott Dixon) add an interesting side story. Tom Berger’s set design, especially the sanitarium (Chumley’s Rest), and the choreographed set changes are worth the price of admission in themselves.

For those who have an attachment to Harvey the movie, and that surely includes a lot of summer visitors to Lanesboro, this Harvey will not disappoint. But others, like me, will leave the theater wondering why such a talented company would expend its efforts on this play.

Harvey plays in repertory with Man of La Mancha through October 25.

Visit the Commonweal for schedules and tickets: Commonweal Theatre