St Michael’s Players present ‘Harvey’ to celebrate 75th birthday

What better way to celebrate 75 years of amateur dramatics than with a six foot invisible pink rabbit?

St Michael’s Players is presenting Harvey this week, as part of their 75th year celebrations. The Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Mary Chase was made famous by the 1950 Hollywood film version of the story starring James Stewart, but it was first performed on stage in the 1940s on Broadway, and in London’s West End in 1949.

As this was the year St Michael’s Players came into being, director Alastair Dewar thought it the perfect play for their autumn production of their 75th anniversary year.

Harvey is an invisible pink rabbit, or at least a pink rabbit visible only to Elwood P Dowd when he drinks. The amiable and eccentric Elwood describes him as six foot, three-and-a-half inches tall, and he introduces him to everyone he meets, which his social climbing sister Veta finds embarrassing.

“I chose Harvey as I have always loved the James Stewart film,” Alastair told The Chiswick Calendar. “It is one of my all time favourites. Then we found out that it was first performed in London in January 1949, so that decided it.”

In St Michael’s Players’ version the main character is Eleanor, not Elwood, played by Allison De Frees, a lawyer who has been with the community theatre group for about five years and directed three plays for them, but for whom this is her first big part on stage.

“She did such a stonking audition she deserves the part,” Alastair told me, but he also thought making the main character female might help him avoid the trap of trying to emulate James Stewart’s performance.

The play opens on Wednesday 2 October and runs to Saturday 5 October at St Michael’s Centre, beside the church on Elmwood Rd in Grove Park.

Book tickets here: stmichaelsplayers.weebly.com

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