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Many years ago I had a work contact who had been a psychiatric social worker before he retired. He once told me that the last person he had sectioned was the Head of Mental Health for the area where he worked.
"And do you know what Stephen?" he said " He didn't want to go! He didn't want to go!" . Well he wouldn't would he? Surely he was in charge of the whole thing? There was professional opinion and then there were
the other people on the receiving end of the opinion. Not him surely?
For although Harvey has lasted for over seventy years as a screwball comedy it has lots to say about serious matters and does so in a very clever way, almost without our noticing.
The main character is Elwood P Dowd, a middle aged man fond of visting all the local bars, playing cards, handing out his business card who don't really want it and introducing people to his best friend,
Harvey. So far, so ordinary. Except that things don't tend to go well after he introduces Harvey. It's not that people don't like him, it's just that they can't see him ... Not that Elwood takes offence -
Elwood never takes offence at anything or anyone. He takes everyone at face value and wants to see the best in them. He is in many ways the ultimate straight man, seemingly never understanding what is really
going on to the exasperation and consternation of everyone else. Particularly exasperated are his sister Veta Louise Simmons and his niece Myrtle Mae. They share a house "343 Temple Drive", but in a clever
plot device Elwood and Veta's late mother left the house to Elwood so mother and daughter are his tenants rather than the other way round. If anything is to be done about Elwood and well, you know,
the other thing Elwood must er, move out in one way or another. And thus we are moved into the world of psychiatry and the oasis of calm that is "Chumley's Rest" run by the esteemed Dr Chumley :
"Whenever people have mental breakdowns they think of Dr Chumley". However it becomes immediately obvious that there is little rest to be had here. It is a seething hotbed of personal
frustration and professional friction. Dr Chumley is apparently too busy to see anyone so we are introduced first to his trusted right hand man Dr Sanderson, frisky front of house Nurse Kelly and enforcer,
sorry, orderly Duane Wilson whose job seems to consist mainly of throwing people in or out of whatever room is ready to receive another troublemaker, er patient ; " Number 13,Upper West R, is ready".
This is when things start to go terribly wrong.
In one of those mistaken identity screw-ups beloved of nineteenth century French farce, Veta May's attempt to get Elwood incarcerated at Chumley's Rest only result in her own detention. Kidnapped, stripped
and dunked in the hydro tub (lest anyone thinks the latter sounds soothing, the water was often freezing cold rather than warm and the dunking could often go on overnight and even for days at a time). Her chances of
appearing in the society pages of the Eldorado Evening News receding all the time, while the chances of appearing in "Psychiatry Today" correspondingly increase the outlook looks bleak. Sarah Ellis Jones excelled at Veta
Louise, trying to bustle her way into local society, living vicariously through both her daughter and her brother, with equally good lines in bewilderment, despair and self importance. Whatever happened to Mr Simmons we
can assume he was no match for her. Cool, ambitious Dr Sanderson played with an unwarranted degree of calm by Neil Forster radiated certainty only undermined by a testy strain of irritation whenever his feelings for Nurse Kelly
cracked his professional equilibrium. Emily Carmichael's Nurse Kelly, her judgement skewed by both Sanderson's good looks "Dr Sanderson is no-one's second fiddle" and Elwood's old fashioned charm "He told me I was lovely and he
called me dear" provided the perfect sparring partner for both of them and proving that in this game of Doctors and Nurses the latter are equally as important as the former, and, unfortunately, equally likely to be mislead and
misguided. Matthew Pert's Wilson, whose only theory of psychiatry appeared to be to thump people and ask questions later provided a brooding presence throughout, threatening explosions like a coffee pot left on the stove.
He was only calmed by his encounters with Aimee Schmidt's Myrtle Mae, although the potential hook up looked more like Caliban and Miranda rather than Ferdinand and Miranda, with Myrtle Mae's lack of profile in society probably
leaving her "no ambition to see a goodlier man". The looks between them throughout were priceless and exceptionally well done. Myrtle May "charming in Rancho Rose" as her mother put it is a rather strange sympathetic
character as it is she who persists longest in wanting to be rid of her turbulent uncle and his long eared companion. But Aimee Schmidt invested her with every ounce of charm and radiance that she could muster and got
far more out of her than might appear on the page. Although apparently a charming ingenue she was no wallflower and her disappointment at Wilson only wanting a glass of milk and a ham sandwich from her was invested with plenty of
meaning while avoiding Carry On crudity. Her ability (and that of the whole cast) to avoid making the mores of the 1940s look silly or dated was evident throughout.
The second half of the play was a sort of extended chase sequence where no-one managed to catch up with anyone. Michael Mayne's Dr Chumley went looking for Elwood and Harvey but ended up chasing only his lost youth,
large parts of which may have been lost to Louisa Shindle's Mrs Chumley, a woman whose laugh could have ended both World Wars early. Chumley's descent into the sort of deluded dreamer that he usually wanted to lock up
was very well done and although I suspect the roadhouses of Pittsburgh are less charming than they were in 1944, his vision of sitting there under the maple trees with an endless supply of cold beer and a young blonde who
wasn't Mrs Chumley was one of the highlights of the evening. Even the understanding Elwood seemed slightly baffled by his attachment to this dream, which made it all the more persuasive. John McSpadyen's Judge Omar Gaffney a man
whose games of cards were constantly being interrupted by the unreasonable requests of people wanting him to practise law every now and again had perhaps the most balanced view of Elwood, giving us back story and a feeling that
everything would turn out ok in the end. At the centre of everything, wanting only the best for everybody was Jonathan Wober's Elwood. The part demands that the action follows Elwood without his ever really being aware of it or
of his own oddity in the eyes of others and this was a fine performance, full of generosity, never making the mistake of playing him for laughs or mugging to the audience. Even when he offered to be injected with the formula
for the sake of his sister's happiness, at the expense of his own you really believed he meant it . His 'last request' "say goodbye to the old chap for me will you" was really quite moving. Alison Du Cane's role as the party
guest (and relative) Mrs Chauvennet fitted in well and illustrated the general reaction of local society to the bonkers idea that we all got lulled into accepting. And John Chapman's everyman cab driver at the end
offered the more reflective shrug of a guy who had been ferrying unfortunates to be cured for fifteen years and didn't really see the benefits to those concerned: "After this he'll be a perfectly normal human being and
you know what bastards they are!". And they don't tip any more.
It's a sobering thought that twenty years after Harvey in the 1960s, the most famous on stage/screen treatments of regimes in American mental health were the very different and sensationalist Shock Corridor and the
hugely successful One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, but Harvey could be said to say much the same things using subtler methods. The same decade saw the publication of Thomas Ssasz's Myth of Mental Illness which argued
(broadly) that psychiatry was basically a con and that people were only really psychologically disturbed because society and "experts" said they were - an opinion that the play itself could be said to advance. This was perhaps
going too far and it is also slightly depressing to note that Mary Chase's drink problems and unhappiness actually followed her triumph with Harvey rather than occurring during the fallow years that preceded it. Director
Andy Marchant should therefore be doubly congratulated on his choice of the play and the handling of the material which made for a beguiling evening in the theatre. It drew you in in a way that you simply didn't expect and
belied its reputation as a simple comedy star vehicle. This could only have been done with a tremendous amount of work, and it showed. Rob Hebblethwaite's double sided set, with the most imaginative use of plastic boxes that I
have ever seen in a show provided a perfect backdrop and Rob Irvine's regular servings of Glenn Miller complemented the mood of the piece. Lynda Twidale's work was particularly notable in the women's costumes which added
notes of colour and fun much needed given the prevalence of white coats.
Oh, and I completely forgot to credit Harvey as Harvey. What? You didn't see him? Really? Maybe you were watching a different play....
Photography by David Sprecher
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