Note: “Today” and “tonight” signify Friday, Nov. 7.
SEQUIM — When it comes to “Harvey,” Olivia Shea is well-versed. She’s read the play, about a man named Elwood Dowd and his invisible friend Harvey, multiple times.
So last year, she suggested staging it at Olympic Theatre Arts — never dreaming she’d take the helm.
But after the play was selected for the 2014 season, no one stepped up to make “Harvey” happen. Except Shea, who is well-known for her work as a director, actor and singer in shows from “God of Carnage” to “Forbidden Broadway.”
Shea took it on, and found the story grew on her. She and her 12-member cast will open “Harvey” tonight at Olympic Theatre Arts, 414 N. Sequim Ave., and take it for a three-weekend run.
Dave McInnes, another veteran of local theater, portrays Elwood. This is a guy to whom everyone would gravitate, were it not for his habit of introducing them to his apparently imaginary friend Harvey. Harvey is a pooka, a 6-foot, 3-inch white rabbit who accompanies him everywhere.
Elwood freaks people out: his former friend Mrs. Chauvenet, played by Elaine Caldwell, and his niece Myrtle Mae (Debbie Embree), who fears Elwood’s reputation as “the biggest screwball in town” — her words — will ruin her chances on the social scene.
So Elwood’s sister Veta Louise (Angela Poynter-Lemaster) decides to do something about him. She takes Elwood in a taxi to a sanitarium called Chumley’s Rest, intending to have him committed.
“But what she says makes the doctor (Miles Carignan) think she’s the one who sees the white rabbit,” Shea said. So into the sanitarium Veta goes.
Next thing we know, gentle-tempered Elwood comes to the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey. And it seems his delusion has had a strange effect on the facility personnel, including director Dr. Chumley (Brian Coughenour).
McInnes, for his part, considers Elwood rich. For him, “everything in life is great. He’s so positive,” the actor said.
It’s not easy playing to an invisible rabbit, of course. McInnes explains that Harvey the pooka is a spiritual being who reveals himself to those who are ready to see him.
So Elwood is not crazy; “in my mind, totally not,” he added. Along with his vision of the rabbit, he has many desirable qualities, such as generosity, loyalty and freedom from holding grudges.
“I am much that way,” McInnes said. “I see the glass as half full, or all the way full.”
Playwright Mary Chase won the Pulitzer Prize for “Harvey,” which premiered on Broadway on Nov. 1, 1944, amid World War II. The play’s run lasted a little longer than four years to close Jan. 15, 1949, after 1,775 performances. In 1950, it was made into a movie starring Jimmy Stewart as Elwood.
McInnes finds the play every bit as satisfying as the film, if not more so.
“We’ve got some awesome talent, in the cast and behind the stage,” he said, adding that Shea’s reputation attracted people to the show.
Shea believes Chase wanted to give people a story that would help them forget, for a while, the brutality in the world.
The Sequim theater director hopes to do the same — and to “make people see this rabbit for themselves,” she said. After the play, Shea added, “I hope people will take that warm spirit home with them, and linger in it.”
