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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I am directing an amateur production of Harvey, which goes live in October 2010 in Chelmsford (anyone wanting tickets please contact me! :).) As such, I've read and heard the words and speeches repeatedly. The more I hear, the more subtle the play becomes. At one level it can be read solely as a genial comedy about an amiable drunk who can see an invisible white rabbit. Look deeper and you can see many more facets to this play that make it infinitely more three dimensional than Jimmy Stewart would have you believe.
For example, Chase gently pricks the socialites of the era, satirising privileged society mores with scalpel precision; she does much the same to the priggishness of the legal and medical professions; and perhaps most significantly, she develops a darker side to Harvey, commenting most particularly on attitudes towards mental illness, how we are happy to condemn others but suppress our own eccentricities. It turns out that many of the characters can see Harvey, but only the delightfully warm and friendly Elwood owns up to that. It never occurs to him for a second that everybody else cannot also see the pooka, but naively so for admitting the truth is the worst social sin of all. Ironically, it is his sister Veta who finally sees the light, just as Dr Chumley is about to inject Elwood with the dreaded Formula 977, a liquid lobotomy that would banish forever not just Harvey but Elwood's gregarious nature.
This play is far more of a delicate balancing act than it at first appears. Full credit to the incredible Harvey for engineering this feat!
For example, Chase gently pricks the socialites of the era, satirising privileged society mores with scalpel precision; she does much the same to the priggishness of the legal and medical professions; and perhaps most significantly, she develops a darker side to Harvey, commenting most particularly on attitudes towards mental illness, how we are happy to condemn others but suppress our own eccentricities. It turns out that many of the characters can see Harvey, but only the delightfully warm and friendly Elwood owns up to that. It never occurs to him for a second that everybody else cannot also see the pooka, but naively so for admitting the truth is the worst social sin of all. Ironically, it is his sister Veta who finally sees the light, just as Dr Chumley is about to inject Elwood with the dreaded Formula 977, a liquid lobotomy that would banish forever not just Harvey but Elwood's gregarious nature.
This play is far more of a delicate balancing act than it at first appears. Full credit to the incredible Harvey for engineering this feat!
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
10 reviews
26 of 30 people found the following review helpful
Harvey - an under-rated fantasy
11 May 1998
Format:Paperback
Linked inexorably with the late, great James Stewart, the play "Harvey" is actually stranger, darker and more clever than most of us remember from the film. Mary Chase establishes three forces in opposition - Elwood (and while this is "his" story, he is a minor character in the play), his family, and the "outsiders" who are caught in the middle. The distinctions between them are bound primarily in their reaction to Harvey, Elwood's best friend.
A much darker version of this same story can be seen in the British drama, "The Ruling Class," made into a film in the 1970s featuring Peter O'Toole.
READ "Harvey," then see the film again, and draw your own conclusions. Ms. Chase was quite a writer.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Delightful and Charming
24 Jun 2005
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
When I was reading this I was replaying the movie in my head. This playing is well written and very charming. It is a about a man Elwood P. Dowd whose best friend Harvey is a giant invisible rabbit. No Harvey is not an imaginary friend. I found it amusing that Elwood's sister wanted Elwood to be committed because of Harvey and yet she knew that Harvey really existed. With Harvey as his friend, Elwood had a very peaceful and gentle disposition, was very pleasant and thoroughly enjoyed every moment of his life. I wonder where I could find a giant invisible rabbit. :)
12 of 16 people found the following review helpful
A strange white rabbit between us
13 Dec 2000
Format:Paperback
Ok: I had already seen the film by Henry Koster, and then I have red the play of Mary Chase; but I was really determinate to read this book, I've tried it 15 years, and only by Amazon I've found it. It was a good idea: the film is very good and it respects surely the text, but here we have the original form of a wonderful idea: Elwood P. Dowd is a man, sure not stupid, which doesn't like the normal life - even if he is rich and lucky ...or just because this? - and decides to go out from the official and serious society with a friend, a really special friend : a giant white rabbit, Harvey, which only Elwood can see! They have a exclusive world, without work, without love, without every problems. They live drinking all the day. Obviously , somebody does't like this situation: his sister Veta Louise, who lives in the Elwood's house with her daughter Myrtle Mae, an incredible old girl always hunting men. A day Veta wants to send Elwood in a psychiatric hospital, but...really we cannot understand who is crazy! After, the dr. Chumley prefer not to change Elwood and to "kill" Harvey: at contrary, he becomes their friend.
This play is wonderful and very clever; even if we can be happy reading, we understand that our life is really closed in many ways, even if we don't want to be drunk to forget our responsibilities we ask ourselves : is this the life we would like? The picture of the good society is very agreeable and true: a good woman cannot be good with her brother, a good daughter feels a violent man, a good doctor wants make a trip with an invisible rabbit, a good judge cannot see the reality... Only simple people are really kind, when meet Elwood and he and Harvey are near them: the great Herman Schimmelplusser (an old man which all call only Herman, only Elwood speaks him with respectful), or the taxi driver Lofgren (which remember the poetic, gentle soul of the crazy he carried at hospital), or Mr. Minninger, an old drunk a day in jail a day out.. These are the Elwood's best friends, he invites these people at dinner, producing big shame of Veta. At last we would like know something about the Elwood's past life, what made change him. We cannot, but it maybe we can: just seeing in ourselves. Mary Chase won the Pulitzer Prize with "Harvey".
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