If you ever wondered what it would be like for someone to be best friends with a 6 ‘1 and a half white rabbit – then your question was answered at this year’s winter play! This past January our high school put on an amazing performance of Harvey by Mary Chase. It’s the story of Elwood P Dowd (Luke Sigal ‘26) who insists that his closest friend is a big white rabbit named Harvey. In addition to this very original tale two one acts were performed as well. The opening of the play was “Oh My God it’s Another Play”, and after intermission there was the “The Rooftop Lesson”, both by Rich Orloff. Harvey invited the audience into the world of the unique and humorous characters, all played really well by the cast. The play was a great success on all parts, from the set to the stage crew and in the tech booth.
The set as well as the costumes helped the actors get into character. Characters like Judge Gaffney (Solomon Doner ‘26), Myrtle Mae Simmons (Quincy Sauter ‘26) and Veta Simmons (Natasha Huen ‘26) all had distinct voices to go with their personalities. These helped develop their characters. “For me because I have the lisp for Myrtle Mae, I think that was really helpful” Quincy explained “it made it easy to not act like yourself”.
With Harvey, the invisible rabbit, being introduced the cast had to figure out how their characters perceived the rabbit. “Me, Quincy and Luke were in a scene together” Natasha explained “and Luke was pretending to see Harvey. I have to pretend to see Harvey but also pretend not to see him so nobody knows”. Quincy’s character Myrtle Mae doesn’t see Harvey at all during these scenes. But Natasha’s character, Veta, does see Harvey expect she ignores him, thus adding layers to the scenes. On top of that Luke had to have a full on conversation with this ‘Harvey’ while playing Elwood.
This play takes the audience from Elwood’s house to a psych ward and all over the place – all the while the question remains: “who or what is this Harvey?”. In addition to Harvey, the two one acts were performed as well. In Oh My God its Another Play the very first person on stage was the stage manager (Abbey Kelkenberg ‘27) who reluctantly handed out scripts to all the actors. Scripts that were then thrown on the ground a few seconds later. Then the Director (Elsie Gao ’28).
The second one act A Rooftop Lesson started with a Jumper (Mira Resnick ’28) on the ledge of the stage. A good samaritan (Abbey Kelkenberg ‘27) runs in to stop her then…click! A teacher (Nazhet Al-Khafaji ’27) pauses the actors with a button. This One Act was very meta and very funny. Nazhet in addition to being the Teacher played Ms. Chumley, Dr. Chumley’s wife, in Harvey. The stage crew and tech booth were very important too and they were really good at their jobs. This play was very good and everyone was so amazing!
