Harvey
Written by Mary Chase
Directed by James March
4 – 7 December 1957
When Elwood P. Dowd starts to introduce his imaginary friend, Harvey, a six-and-a-half-foot rabbit, to guests at a society party, his sister, Veta, has seen as much of his eccentric behaviou as she can tolerate. She decides to have him committed to a sanitarium to spare her daughter, Myrtle Mae, and their family from future embarrassment. Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the verge of lunacy when she explains to doctors that years of living with Elwood’s hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also! The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood’s delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors. Only at the end does Veta realize that maybe Harvey isn’t so bad after all.
Cast
Myrtle May Simmons – Janet Thorne
Veta Louise Simmons – Shirley Osborne
Elwood P. Dowd – Norton H. Collard
Mrs Ethel Chauvenet – Pam Kosh
Ruth Kelly – Marion Brooks
Marvin Wilson – Clive Tanner
Lyman Sanderson, M.D – Ken Smith
William R. Chumley, M.D – Tom Ellis
Mrs Betty Chumley – Sylvia Palmer
Judge Omar Gaffney – Robert Lindley
E.J. Lofgren – Geoffrey Ellis
Crew
Stage Manager – Denis Osborne
Assistants – Pat Watson, Bill Brooks, Harold Snelling
Electrician – Robert D. Orwell
Décor – Alan Osborne
Set Design – Denis Osborne
Properties – Mavis Hutchinson, Mary Head