Harvey
Writer: Mary Chase
Director: Robbie Parkin for Harvest Rain
Starring: Leigh Walker, Jeni Godwin, Leah Pellinkhof, Naomi Price, John Stibbard and Jason Chatfield
Venue: Sydney St Theatre, New Farm
The man three up from me was laughing so hard the bank of seats we shared began to rock. Soon the whole theatre was reverberating with applause and loud laughter.
It was quite a tribute to the genius of playwright Mary Chase, the cleverness of director Robbie Parkin and the abilities of his cast.
But something wasn’t quite right.
The over-enthusiastic response to the opening night of Harvest Rain’s Harvey owed more than a little to the composition of the audience: friends and family of the cast and regular supporters of the company. My partner and I seemed to be the only ones who didn’t know everybody else in our immediate vicinity.
Perhaps, it occurred to me, the riotous applause was more a matter of barracking for the home team than a spontaneous positive assessment of the performance.
Not that there weren’t many moments deserving accolades; it’s just that it was all too much – to the point of detracting from my enjoyment of the good bits.
Harvey tells the story of Elwood P. Dowd (Leigh Walker), a man whose best friend is a tall, invisible rabbit. His insistence on introducing his hallucination to everyone he meets makes life difficult for his social-climbing sister Veta (Jeni Godwin) and her obnoxious daughter Myrtle Mae (Leah Pellinkhof). When he disrupts a soiree, they decide to have him committed.
Problem is that Elwood is such a nice fellow, and Veta is so disoriented when she gets to the sanatorium the shrinks lock up the wrong person.
Finally, they get their man, and a moral dilemma ensues: is it kinder to let him live with a harmless delusion than to medicate him until he accepts the often unpleasant realities of life?
It’s hard to get a handle on director Parkin’s approach to this play. He seems to have visualised it as a 1960s British farce (played with broad Australian accents) rather than a gentle comedy set firmly in 1940s America.
So we have Myrtle Mae in psychedelic threads, a soundtrack of pop songs, a caricature of a German psychiatrist (John Stibbard) and other cliches. If that was Parkin’s intention, he should also have taken a pair of scissors to the script. At a running time of 150 minutes (including interval) it’s too long for the cast to sustain the high energy required for farce.
And then there’s that moral at the end, which doesn’t sit quite so well in this interpretation.
The acting, meanwhile, suffers from the dreaded try-too-hard syndrome, with exaggerated performances taking away from the essential humanity of the text.
Pellinkhof, perhaps realising that Myrtle Mae is thoroughly unlikeable, plays her as a ditz who’s so far over the top that she can’t be believed.
At the other end of the spectrum, there were moments during Paul Geoghegan’s portrayal of the hospital warder Wilson where I wanted to race on to the stage and feel for a pulse. Wilson is charmless but he’s not lifeless. His violent streak, quite evident in the script, doesn’t seem credible here.
More satisfying when it comes to romantic subplots is the less forced chemistry between nurse Kelly (Naomi Price) and junior doctor Sanderson (Jason Chatfield).
Walker’s approach to Dowd had me confused at first but I began to appreciate what he was doing. His gentle pace, at odds with the frenetic action around him, revealed much of what this play is truly about.
The barrackers might disagree but I think the other performers should ratchet back the contrived silliness and turn up the warmth.
Director: Robbie Parkin for Harvest Rain
Starring: Leigh Walker, Jeni Godwin, Leah Pellinkhof, Naomi Price, John Stibbard and Jason Chatfield
Venue: Sydney St Theatre, New Farm
The man three up from me was laughing so hard the bank of seats we shared began to rock. Soon the whole theatre was reverberating with applause and loud laughter.
It was quite a tribute to the genius of playwright Mary Chase, the cleverness of director Robbie Parkin and the abilities of his cast.
But something wasn’t quite right.
The over-enthusiastic response to the opening night of Harvest Rain’s Harvey owed more than a little to the composition of the audience: friends and family of the cast and regular supporters of the company. My partner and I seemed to be the only ones who didn’t know everybody else in our immediate vicinity.
Perhaps, it occurred to me, the riotous applause was more a matter of barracking for the home team than a spontaneous positive assessment of the performance.
Not that there weren’t many moments deserving accolades; it’s just that it was all too much – to the point of detracting from my enjoyment of the good bits.
Harvey tells the story of Elwood P. Dowd (Leigh Walker), a man whose best friend is a tall, invisible rabbit. His insistence on introducing his hallucination to everyone he meets makes life difficult for his social-climbing sister Veta (Jeni Godwin) and her obnoxious daughter Myrtle Mae (Leah Pellinkhof). When he disrupts a soiree, they decide to have him committed.
Problem is that Elwood is such a nice fellow, and Veta is so disoriented when she gets to the sanatorium the shrinks lock up the wrong person.
Finally, they get their man, and a moral dilemma ensues: is it kinder to let him live with a harmless delusion than to medicate him until he accepts the often unpleasant realities of life?
It’s hard to get a handle on director Parkin’s approach to this play. He seems to have visualised it as a 1960s British farce (played with broad Australian accents) rather than a gentle comedy set firmly in 1940s America.
So we have Myrtle Mae in psychedelic threads, a soundtrack of pop songs, a caricature of a German psychiatrist (John Stibbard) and other cliches. If that was Parkin’s intention, he should also have taken a pair of scissors to the script. At a running time of 150 minutes (including interval) it’s too long for the cast to sustain the high energy required for farce.
And then there’s that moral at the end, which doesn’t sit quite so well in this interpretation.
The acting, meanwhile, suffers from the dreaded try-too-hard syndrome, with exaggerated performances taking away from the essential humanity of the text.
Pellinkhof, perhaps realising that Myrtle Mae is thoroughly unlikeable, plays her as a ditz who’s so far over the top that she can’t be believed.
At the other end of the spectrum, there were moments during Paul Geoghegan’s portrayal of the hospital warder Wilson where I wanted to race on to the stage and feel for a pulse. Wilson is charmless but he’s not lifeless. His violent streak, quite evident in the script, doesn’t seem credible here.
More satisfying when it comes to romantic subplots is the less forced chemistry between nurse Kelly (Naomi Price) and junior doctor Sanderson (Jason Chatfield).
Walker’s approach to Dowd had me confused at first but I began to appreciate what he was doing. His gentle pace, at odds with the frenetic action around him, revealed much of what this play is truly about.
The barrackers might disagree but I think the other performers should ratchet back the contrived silliness and turn up the warmth.
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