Syracuse Stage will hold a reading of Mary Chase’s classic comedy “Harvey,” directed by associate artistic director Melissa Crespo and featuring a cast comprised entirely of local actors, including Syracuse University Department of Drama faculty members and Syracuse Stage artistic director Robert Hupp.
“Harvey” will be presented in the Archbold Theatre at Syracuse Stage, 820 E. Genesee St., Syracuse, New York, on Sunday, Jan. 26 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are free of charge and must be reserved in advance at SyracuseStage.org.
The Pulitzer Prize-winning play, which tells the story of a good-natured man whose best friend is an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit, served a major inspiration for playwright Eboni Booth’s “Primary Trust,” which will Jan. 22 through Feb. 9 in the Archbold Theatre.
“It’s wild how similar and uniquely different Harvey and Primary Trust are from one another,” Crespo says. “The first won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, while the second won in 2024. Both plays deal with kindness and the importance of community care. I hope theaters around the country are encouraged to produce both plays in conversation with one another. It’s especially exciting to have a cast of local actors perform in ‘Harvey’ on top of the ‘Primary Trust’ set, which happens to be set in Central New York.”
“Harvey” premiered on Broadway in 1944 and was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1945. The playwright adapted her own script into an Oscar-winning film in 1950, starring Jimmy Stewart as Elwood P. Dowd. “Harvey” was last seen on Broadway in 2012, starring Jim Parsons, for which he received a Tony nomination.
Elwood P. Dowd insists on including his friend Harvey in all of his sister Veta’s social gatherings. Trouble is, Harvey is an imaginary six-and-a-half foot-tall rabbit. To avoid future embarrassment for her family—and especially for her daughter, Myrtle Mae—Veta decides to have Elwood committed to a sanitarium. At the sanitarium, a frantic Veta explains to the staff that her years of living with Elwood’s hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also, and so the doctors mistakenly commit her instead of her mild-mannered brother. The truth comes out, however; Veta is freed, and the search is on for Elwood, who eventually arrives at the sanitarium of his own volition, looking for Harvey. But it seems that Elwood and his invisible companion have 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.
