Believe it or not, I have a relationship with Harvey, too! Walk down Memory Lane alert: when I was a freshman in high school, I played on the girls' volleyball team. I'm not really the athletic type, though, so I got cut my sophomore year. Oh well. I started looking for an after-school activity to take the place of volleyball. Lo and behold, I decided to audition for the school play, Kiss and Tell. I didn't get a part, but I did get the bug. So when my school did Harvey the next fall, I auditioned and got cast as Ruth Kelly, RN. I had a blast and an epiphany - my future was decided. Therefore, I have a HUGE soft spot for this play.
Oddly enough, I've never seen another production of the play. I've seen the movie many times over the years, but certainly not lately. It was fun to sit in Studio 54 last night and be reminded of lines and bits of business that have sat dormant in my brain for over...well, let's just say, quite a few years. :) Harvey is a play, I think, that depends on charm. If your Elwood doesn't project charm and a sweetly innocent knowingness, you're in big trouble. Of course, Roundabout probably would never have presented this play if Jim Parsons didn't exist. He could be the only actor right now who could play Elwood P Dowd. His utter sincerity and truthfulness anchors the daffy comedy around him. He's just a joy to watch. I got tears in my eyes a few times, not only at his sweetness, but also at the melancholy of memory. It was quite a trip for me. :)
Jessica Hecht is just never one of my favorites, I can't help it. I did enjoy her physical antics as Elwood's put-upon sister in the second act, but the vocal mannerisms she's adopted make it difficult to understand what she's even saying. I missed a lot of her laugh lines, unfortunately. Of course, I was seated in the rafters. Perhaps if I had been seated downstairs...
I thought Charles Kimbrough, as Dr Chumley, was terrific. His entrance into the final scene was a riot and I loved his monologue about wanting two weeks in Akron. It was comedy perfection. Larry Bryggman is always grand; Carol Kane used her utter Carol Kane-ness to perfection as Mrs Chumley; Man Men's Rich Sommers found some nice layers in the hospital orderly, Wilson; Angela Paton and Peter Benson truly shine in their tiny little scenes; Morgan Spector and Holley Fain were very pleasant as Dr Sanderson and Nurse Kelly, though I must profess a preference for my performance alongside a high-school crush. (lol)
There were also quite a few characters seated in the balcony last night - there was the guy in a full tuxedo, with fedora, only his tuxedo pants were running shorts. Um, ok. And then there was the guy who was wearing a sleeveless jumpsuit, suitable for fixing cars perhaps, sporting an alarming amount of hair, both on his head and on his face. The gal in front of me pushed herself back into her seat whenever she laughed, jarring my knees and the guy behind me jammed his knees into my seatback, throwing me forward. I was thisclose to having motion sickness. Oh, and some other kids behind me wondered if there would be a different show in the theater later that night, because 'that's how they do it on Broadway.' I couldn't wrap my head around that one, so I stopped eavesdropping. The ushers clearly hadn't gotten enough training, because nearly everyone was directed to the wrong seat at first. There was one family, I kid you not, that must've gone up and down the stairs by my seat four times before finally finding where they were sitting. I was thisclose to getting up and helping them myself...
I highly recommend seeing Harvey - for most, it will be a charming, gentle, lovely summer diversion into the American theater of the past. For me, though, it was also a lovely remembrance of simpler times gone by. Which, I guess, Harvey really is. Whether it was your first high-school play or not...
**five years ago, I cried my way (in a good way) through the National Asian-American Theater Festival's production of Falsettoland; three years ago, I caught a matinee performance of Tin Pan Alley Rag and an evening performance of Pure Confidence - I enjoyed them both**
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