Harvey, Georgetown Palace Theatre, March 26 - April 18

If it weren't for Jimmy Stewart, Mary Chase's gentle comedy Harvey would probably have been forgotten long ago. It's a pretty broad farce about a hysterically pretentious small town woman desperate to avoid the social opprobrium of her unmarried brother's mental delusions.

The local mental clinic Chumley's Rest is one locus of the fun, where blinkered psychiatrists and a muscle-guy attendant think Veta Louise is the nut-case. Brother Elwood P. Dowd serenely accepts their diagnoses while coming cutely close several times to introducing them to his friend Harvey, the invisible rabbit who's six feet tall.

Once all that is straightened out, in the second act Dowd shows with unfailing courtesy that his world-view isn't so bad, the docs offer him and Veta Louise the cure-all of a mysterious injection to return him to reality, and we get some whimsical evidence that maybe Harvey really does exist, after all. Veta faces a 'perils of Pauline' dilemma about whether to embrace reality or the six-foot rabbit that's become increasingly real for her, as well.

Read more and view images at AustinLiveTheatre.com . . . .

Upcoming: Harvey, Georgetown Palace Theatre, March 26 - April 18

Click for ALT review, April 5


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by Mary Chase (Non-Musical)

March 26 - April 18, Fridays & Saturdays at 7:30 p.m., Sundays at 2 p.m.
General admission, $20; seniors (55+), $18; students(16+)/active duty military with ID): $12, children 15 yrs or younger, $8

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 behavior 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.