One of the most fascinating things about reviewing is that no matter what it looks like on paper, you can never guess ahead how a show’s actually going to turn out. Harvey is a perfect case in point.
There’s a famous 1950 film of this Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy starring James Stewart, but it hasn’t been screened for yonks. At first sight this revival is a delightful period piece set in upper class New England where nice rich American ladies from slightly eccentric families hold charity dos in their immense mansions. The elegant sets are top-notch, and the marvellously recreated period clothes are some of the best I’ve ever seen on a stage. Plus Harvey has a really starry cast drawn from the top-notch of English acting – mainly ex-National Theatre and RSC, you’ll certainly be familiar with most of them from Midsummer Murders.
Harvey is a comedy of the good old-fashioned American screwball kind about a strictly conventional family one of whom who has an imaginary and invisible giant rabbit called Harvey for a friend. The fact that Elwood P. Dowd drinks seems like proof that dypsomania can occur even in the poshest milieux.
But during the course of the action from mansion via lunatic asylum to bar room we see that judgments depend on where you’re standing, and that the American constitution allows everyone the chance to follow their dream in the pursuit of happiness.
As rich matron Veta Louise Simmons the incomparable Maureen Lipman has never been better, her combination of vagueness and perception added to a brilliant physicality creating a rare perfection of stage timing. Ingrid Oliver is just right as her ingénue daughter longing for love, while James Dreyfus (Gimmee Gimmee Gimmee, The Thin Blue Line) is a revelation as the dipsomaniac brother who surprisingly teaches everyone a lesson in living.
I’m told privately this five-star show is off to London’s Haymarket Theatre where it could run for years. See it at the Rep while you can without the West End’s eye-watering prices. Wise-cracking, charming, funny and with a heart of gold, Harvey is pure theatrical magic.
Harvey runs at Birmingham Rep until February 21. For tickets phone the Box Office on 0121 236 4455 or go online at Birmingham-rep.co.uk.
