Harvey by Mary Chase, Zach Theatre, Topfer Theatre, May 15 - June 16, 2013

Martin Burke (image: Kirk R. Tuck)

by Christine Mendez


Harvey by Mary Chase at the Zach Theatre, directed by Dave Steakley, is a laughter-inducing good time. It centers around Elwood P. Dowd , a charming, generous and altogether very pleasant man who happens to have an invisible six-foot rabbit named Harvey as his best friend. 

 Martin Burke’s comic performance is flawless, once again. His subtle gestures and affably earnest conversations with Harvey have you almost seeing the giant white rabbit yourself! Burke portrays Elwood’s genuinely friendly without out a single false note.

Elwood’s sister (Lauren Lane) and her daughter Myrtle Mae (Erin Barlow) have spent years of hiding the invisible and unseemly Harvey from society, and they decide the time has come to commit Elwood to a sanitarium. A mix-up confines the wrong person, and a happily unaware Elwood continues on his pleasant way with a smile in place.

Lauren Lane (image: Kirk R. Tuck)

Lane and Barlow as mother and daughter duo have you feeling the shame and hilarity of the situation simultaneously. Lauren Lane’s predicaments had the audience laughing all evening long – so much so that at times one had to strain to hear the dialogue. A week of preview performances should have been sufficient to adjust the timing – but perhaps the audience for the official opening night was particularly exuberant. I wished the ladies would have another beat before delivering their lines, but they definitely succeeded in keeping us amused.

Liz Beckham, Martin Burke, Jacob Trussell (image: Kirk R.Tuck)

Elwood’s gentle courtesy makes Nurse Kelly (Liz Beckham) feel appreciated and cherished even when the man she has her eyes set on, Dr. Sanderson (Jacob Trussell), treats her poorly. Elwood’s unwavering chivalry is refreshing, disarming and disconcerting to the other characters.

The Pulitzer-Prize-winning play from 1945, familiar to many from the Jimmy Stewart movie, poses a still relevant question about delusions, social propriety and responsibility. Is it right to lock up a friendly, generous and good-natured man who is harmlessly out of contact with reality as we conceive it? What’s the danger to us if he imagines he has a giant invisible rabbit as companion and best friend? People reject behavior they do not understand, so they instinctively move to counter it and exclude Elwood, even though he’s charismatic and kind.

Harvey the rabbit remains invisible, but his presence is palpable and apparent in the set design by Michelle Ney. Rabbit figures are to be found littered throughout the set. I was pleasantly surprised to detect a few rabbits in portraits on the walls of the sets, and I spent much of the intermission trying to find them all. The revolving stage was a quick and fun way to change between the two sets. The contrast between the warm library and the cold, almost empty environment of the sanitarium was stark – but it had no effect on the effervescent Elwood.

I recommend that you hop over to Zach Theatre to catch this performance of Harvey before he disappears!

HARVEY by Mary Chase, Zach Theatre, May 15 - June 16, 2013

(Zach Theatre, S. Lamar at Riverside (parking on Riverside and on Toomey Rd, one block south),


HARVEY

by MARY CHASE
directed by DAVE STEAKLEY
featuring MARTIN BURKE and LAUREN LANE

Previews May 15-22 - Champagne Opening and Press Night is Thursday, May 23 at 7:30 p.m., followed by a reception with the stars of show.

LGBT Wilde Party with pre-show mixer is Thursday, May 16. 

Performances continue Wednesdays - Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sunday at 2:30 p.m. through June 16, 2013.

To order tickets call 512-476-0541 ext. 1 or visit www.zachtheatre.org. Tickets range from $25-$65. 
Student Rush Tickets: $18 one hour before showtime (with valid ID).

 ZACH’s full bar featuring signature cocktails and hors d'oeuvre boxes opens one hour prior to showtime and remains open for one hour post-show.


at ZACH’s new Topfer Theatre, 202 South Lamar Blvd., (corner of Riverside Drive and South Lamar Blvd.)

In this 1945-Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy "Austin's favorite actor" (The Austin Chronicle), Martin Burke stars as Elwood P. Dowd, a happy-go-lucky chap with a kind word for everyone he meets, especially his invisible best friend, a six-foot tall rabbit named "Harvey." When Elwood's social-climbing sister decides to have him committed, this delightful play embarks on a madcap discovery that is by turns hilarious and endearing. Maybe our dreams are more important than we ever imagined.


ZACH’s Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley says: “Martin Burke and the role of Elwood in HARVEY is a marriage made in heaven. Martin’s charm, ability to make us see Harvey as a fully-realized ‘pooka’, and gift for comedy will be a large amount of fun for all of us. Martin is joined by actress Lauren Lane, who is such a gifted interpreter of physical comedy, which makes her a natural for this project. This Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Mary Chase, as funny as it is, was also her indictment of McCarthyism in telling the story of the easy-going dreamer with a vivid imagination who is pitted against those who want him to conform to an accepted version of reality. I couldn’t help but think about local First Amendment hero John Henry Faulk when I read this play. John Henry was Karen Kuykendall’s uncle, which makes this show very appropriate to this particular inaugural season on the Karen Kuykendall stage.”

ZACH’s production of HARVEY features an all-star cast:  

MARTIN BURKE as Elwood P. Dowd, LAUREN LANE as Veta Louise Simmons, ERIN BARLOW as Myrtle Mae Simmons, LIZ BECKHAM as Ruth Kelly, R.N., DAVID JARROTT as Judge Omar Gaffney, FRITZ KETCHUM as Betty Chumley, SCOTTY ROBERTS as E.J. Lofgren, MICHAEL STUART as William R. Chumley, M.D., VICTOR STEELE as Duane Wilson, JACOB TRUSSELL as Lyman Sanderson, M.D, and M.J. VAN DIVIER as Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet

Scenic Design by MICHELLE NEY · Lighting Design by MATT WEBB · Costume Design by SUSAN BRANCH TOWNE · Sound Design by CRAIG BROCK · Properties Design by JUSTIN COX · Stage Management by LISA GOERING

ZACH’s production of HARVEY is sponsored by Executive Producers: James Armstrong and Larry Connelly, Carolyn and Marc Seriff, Carla Tyson Photography

Free Balcony Play series in conjunction with HARVEY

The second Balcony Play, to be launched in conjunction with HARVEY, opening May 15, will be a new comedic riff on A Midsummer Night's Dream. All Balcony Plays are FREE and open to the public. Concessions will be available; no tickets or reservations are necessary. See the schedule here: http://www.zachtheatre.org/content/balcony-plays-mad-beat-hip-gone-conversations.


ZACH Theatre is Austin’s leading professional producing theatre, employing more than 600 actors, musicians, and designers annually. Founded in 1932, ZACH is the longest running theatre company in Texas, serving 95,000 adults and youth annually. ZACH creates its own nationally recognized plays and musicals that ignite the imagination, lift the spirit, and engage the community under the proven leadership of Producing Artistic Director Dave Steakley and Managing Director Elisbeth Challener. Launching its 80th season in 2012, ZACH continues to expand and engage with Austin, adding the new 420-seat, 32,000-square-foot Topfer Theatre to its performing arts campus, nearly doubling ZACH’s capacity while retaining its hallmark intimate theatre-going experience. Visit www.zachtheatre.org for more information.
ZACH Theatre is sponsored in part, by Applied Materials, Austin Catering, Four Hands Home, Holiday Inn-Lady Bird Lake, Kirk Tuck Photography, Marquee Event Group, OnRamp, Austin American-Statesman, KXAN TV 36, and Time Warner Cable; and by grants from Junior League of Austin, The Shubert Foundation, The National Endowment for the Arts, Texas Commission on the Arts, and the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division, which believes an investment in the arts is an investment in Austin’s future. Visit Austin at NowPlayingAustin.com.

(Click to go to the AustinLiveTheatre front page)

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.