On Stage: Harvey (Branch Out Productions)

Branch Out Productions’ fall season is underway with a production of the Pulitzer Prize winning comedy Harvey by Mary Chase.

Branch Out Productions has wasted no time getting its fall season underway. Harvey is on stage now at Fredericton High School’s Tom Morrison Theatre.

“At its core, Harvey is a play about kindness,” said director Tom O’Connell. “It’s a theme that stems all the way back to the actual writing of the play by Mary Chase. She heard that a neighbour had lost her son in the Second World War and wanted to write something that might make that woman laugh again. The result of that thought exercise was this play about a man, his invisible six-foot-tall rabbit, and the chaos they inflict together.”

Harvey debuted on Boardway in 1944 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the following year. BOP’s production opened last night and runs until Saturday evening.

This production keeps with BOP’s history of warm welcoming shows that feature a cast of local actors putting it all on the line every night.

“The cast is composed of several veterans of previous Branch Out shows, most of whom I had worked with previously as an actor,” said O’Connell. “It’s been wonderful reuniting with everyone. This is the first show for a lot of us since the pandemic, while also bringing some new blood into the Branch Out family.”

Real friends can be hard to come by, especially ones like Harvey! Harvey is a six-foot-tall rabbit invisible to everyone, except Mr Elwood P. Dowd. In order to save the family’s social reputation, Elwood’s sister, Vita, decides to bring an end to Harvey and have Elwood committed but the tables turn when the doctors mistakenly commit the anxiety-ridden Vita instead. Elwood—and Harvey—slip out of the hospital unbothered, setting off a hilarious whirlwind of confusion and chaos as everyone in town tries to catch a man and his invisible rabbit friend.