You don’t often catch the Theater Project dabbling in fantasy. Anthropomorphic animals are a distinct rarity onstage at the troupe’s Majestic Theater. But Harvey, the six-and-a-half-foot rabbit currently residing there, is no Disneyfied fuzzy bunny. He’s a debonair, cocktail-loving fellow and, what’s more, a philosophical metaphor.
Harvey, of course, is Mary Chase’s Pulitzer-winning 1944 comedy in which the title character is unseen, but whose questionable presence upends the lives of all, sowing confusion and ill-temper. All, that is, but the co-hero of the story, the one we can see. Elwood P. Dowd is the serene center of the maelstrom. Like Harvey, he’s an old-school gentleman who won’t sit while a lady is standing. He’s also a certified eccentric, or, in the view of most people around him, a certifiable loony.
Elwood and Harvey are best pals. They go everywhere together, most frequently to one of the local bars. Elwood is the only one who can see and converse with his lapine friend (or so we think), though he unfailingly introduces Harvey to everyone he meets. Which is exactly why his sister Veta, a would-be social climber, is ashamed to invite visitors to the home they share, and why the action quickly moves from their house to the local sanatorium.
Rand Foerster’s pitch-perfect production of Chase’s nimbly calibrated farce stars David Mason, a frequent and welcome presence on Valley stages. His diffident charm is a good match for affable Elwood, and he deftly avoids channeling Jimmy Stewart’s memorable performance in the 1950 movie version. One of the strokes that make the play more than a one-joke sitcom—and keep it from being too dated—is the playwright’s decision to make Elwood more than an amiable innocent. He’s an intentional eccentric whose whimsical delusion (or is it?) derives from a clear-eyed appraisal of a cockeyed world. As he explains to the psychiatrist who tries to steer him back to reality, “Doctor, I’ve wrestled with reality for 35 years, and I’m happy to say that I’ve finally won out over it.”
The play’s stylish ambiance is enhanced by Dawn McKay’s period costumes and Greg Trochlil’s nifty set, which revolves on not one but three turntables, revealing on one side Elwood and Veta’s tastefully old-fashioned drawing room, and on the other, the scrubbed white woodwork and tacky wallpaper of the sanatorium.
In a strong supporting cast, Cate Damon is the standout as tightly wound sister Veta, a woman nearing the end of her tether, and one of the production’s keenest pleasures is watching it fray and snap. Nicole Meldonian is an effectively pouty, frumpy Myrtle Mae, Veta’s daughter, though in a cast that largely avoids stereotype, she comes closest.
James Emery and Robert Lunde play dissimilar but equally stuffy pillars of the community. Emery is Dr. Chumley, head of the psychiatric hospital, trim and dapper and Freudian goateed, and Lunde is sclerotic and choleric Judge Gaffney, pressed into service (despite his elevation to the bench, apparently) as a personal injury lawyer.
Andrew Bryce is a bit one-note as young Dr. Sanderson—suitably arrogant but charmless; I couldn’t see why Elizabeth Swan’s starched and sexy Nurse Kelly pines for him. Denise Walker, though, is most definitely two-note, giving distinct manners and mannerisms to a pair of elderly ladies.
And what of Harvey? Turns out (spoiler alert) he’s a pooka—“a fairy spirit in animal form, wise but mischievous, very fond of rum-pots and crackpots”—a Jeeves to Elwood’s hapless Bertie Wooster, and a lesson for all: when reality bites, win out over it.•
Through Dec. 14, Majestic Theater, 131 Elm St., West Springfield. (413) 747-7797, majestictheater.com.
Chris Rohmann is at StageStruck@crocker.com and his StageStruck blog is at valleyadvocate.com/blogs/stagestruck.
