HARVEY


Mary Chase’s 1944 Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy classic about a man and an invisible six-foot-one-and-a-half-inch-tall rabbit called Harvey returns 81 years after its Broadway debut to close out Whittier Community Theatre’s 101st season on a delightfully (and thought-provokingly) winning note.

Town eccentric Elwood P. Dowd (Justin Patrick Murphy) may have no qualms about hanging around with a bff like Harvey, but tell that to his sister, society matron Veta Louise Simmons (Patty van Empel), whose hopes of finding a husband for her still marriageable daughter Myrtle Mae (Mindy Le) rest on getting her oddball brother committed to Chumley’s Experimental Rest Home For The Mentally Askew.

Unfortunately for Veta, it’s a plan that goes disastrously askew when she’s gets hauled off to a padded cell by hospital staffers who somehow get it in their heads that she’s the one in need of psychiatric help.

And this is just the start of the screwball comedy that beat out Tennessee Williams’ The Glass Menagerie for the 1944 Pulitzer before fading into relative obscurity (at least compared to the Williams masterpiece), no matter how much charm and depth it retains even 80-plus years after it opened on Broadway.

Is the six-foot rodent a figment of Elwood’s imagination or is he merely invisible to those too “normal” to see him? Has Elwood’s life improved since Harvey came into it, or would he be better off if modern psychiatry could rid him of what may or may not be a delusion? Is sanity all it’s cracked up to be?

These unexpectedly profound questions get posed in what seems at first to be not much more than a frothy trifle about eccentricity gone overboard, but they (and Harvey’s lighthearted, optimistic tone) must have resonated with both Pulitzer Prize Board members and audiences grown weary of WWII-related news on a daily basis.

Yes, Harvey’s now hefty two-and-a-half-hour running time could use a significant 21st-century trim, but if you’re anything like me, you too will find yourself falling under Mary Chase’s play’s magic spell.

Director Jonathan Tupanjanin and an all-around splendid cast make it clear that amateur theater need not be amateurish, beginning with Harvey’s pair of evenly matched leads, a couple of community theater vets who can more than hold their own against the so-called “pros.”

 In his 21st time treading the WCT boards, Murphy’s adorably odd Elwood wins us over from the moment he pops through the front door, invisible friend by his side, delivering a performance that is both quirky and grounded in reality, and ultimately quite touching.

 The divine van Empel is such mid-Atlantic-accented perfection as the deliciously ditzy, dotty Veta that you’d swear she’s jumped right off a 1940s movie screen and onto the Whittier Community Theatre stage.

Le is a man-crazy hoot as Myrtle Mae, Robb Tracy is terrific as the imperious Dr. Chumley, Jeremy Krasovic and Lauren Velasco have great will-they-or-won’t-they chemistry as the handsome young Dr. Lyman and his nubile nurse, and Tevin C. Phelps is an amusingly imposing presence as hospital orderly Duane.

 Nancy Tyler (a scene-stealer as society matron Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet), Joanne Fawley (a no-nonsense Mrs. Chumley), Richard De Vicariis (an ornery, cane-wielding Judge Gaffney), and A.J. Andrews (as Noo Yawk-accented, voice-of-reason cab driver E.J. Lofgren) make the very most of their cameo roles, with producer Margie Wann appearing briefly as Dowd-Simmons household maid Miss Johnson.

Roxie Lee and Emily Velasco have designed a spiffy modular set that gets transformed by cast members from Veta’s library to Dr. Chumley’s rest home and back again in a series of intricately choreographed, swiftly executed scene changes.

Tyler’s nostalgically mid-20th-century costumes, Julie Breihan’s just-right period props, and Suzanne Frederickson’s expert lighting complete a production design not all that different from what you’d see on a regional theater stage.

Carlos David Lopez is stage manager and Guy van Empel is assistant stage manager. Michael Ornelas is portraitist. A pre-recorded Elizabeth Lauriten voices the soloist at Veta’s latest society gathering. Stacy Li is sound tech. Frederickson is technical director.

Harvey may not have stood the test of time as spectacularly as The Glass Menagerie, but that doesn’t mean it’s not worth reviving, especially when said revival is as sparklingly acted and staged as is at Whittier Community Theater, still going strong at 101-going-on-102.

Whittier Community Theatre, The Center Theatre, 7630 S. Washington Ave., Whittier. Through June 14. Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00. Sunday June 8 at 2:30
www.WhittierCommunityTheatre.org

–Steven Stanley
May 30, 2025
Photos: Ernie Peralta

Visit www.theatreinla.com/nowplayingrs.php for a review roundup of what’s now playing in theaters around Los Angeles.

 

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