Spotlight Theatre Present HARVEY

 

Spotlight Theatre presents
Harvey 
By Mary Chase and Directed by Bernie Cardell

Spotlight Theatre Company presents Harvey  now playing through Saturday, March 26 at the John Hand Theater.  Elwood P. Dowd is an average mild-mannered man with one slight eccentricity: he keeps introducing people to his best friend, an invisible six-and-a-half foot tall white rabbit named Harvey! In order to save the family from further embarrassment Elwood's sister, Veta Louise decides to have Elwood committed to the local sanitarium, and soon the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion.  Denver native Mary Chase gives us a screwball comedy about friendship that the whole family will enjoy.

The cast, under the direction of Bernie Cardell, includes, Andy Anderson (Elwood P. Dowd), Angie Thatcher (Myrtle Mae Simmons), Deb Curtis (Veta Louise Simmons), Bob Byrnes (E.J. Lofgren), John Greene (Duane Wilson), Johanna Jaquith (Ruth Kelly, R.N.), Jim Landis (Judge Omar Gaffney), Ken Street (William R. Chumley, M.D.), Linda Suttle (Betty Chumley), Nancy Thomas (Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet) and David Trudeau (Lyman Sanderson, M.D.).
 
Mary Coyle Chase was an American journalist, playwright and screenwriter, known primarily for writing the Broadway play Harvey, later adapted for film starring James Stewart. She wrote fourteen plays, two children's novels, one screenplay, and worked seven years at the Rocky Mountain News as a journalist. She began her career as a journalist on the Denver Times and Rocky Mountain News in 1924, leaving the News (the Denver Times was folded into the News in 1926) in 1931 to write plays, do freelance reporting work, and raise a family. At the News, she started writing on the society pages, but soon became a feature writer, reporting the news from a sob sister, emotional angle, becoming part of the news itself as a comic figure, "our Lil' Mary", or writing funny, flapper era pieces as part of a series of "Charlie & Mary" stories (Charlie Wunder drew the cartoons and Mary wrote the text). Chase received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama forHarvey in 1945.

Spotlight Theatre Company presents Harvey now playing through Saturday, March 26 at the John Hand Theater, 7653 E. 1st Place in Denver. Performances are Friday/Saturday at 7:30 p.m. Sundays, through March 20, at 6:30 p.m.  For tickets or more information, call the box office at 720-880-8727 or visit the Spotlight Theatre Company online at www.thisisspotlight.org.

Photo Credit: Brian Miller