Whitefish Bay Drama Club Presents 'Harvey'

The Whitefish Bay High School drama club will raise the curtain on , its newest theatrical production, Thursday night.

In the comedic play, Elwood P. Dowd introduces his imaginary friend, Harvey, a six-and-a-half-foot rabbit, at a society party, prompting his sister Veta to have her eccentric brother committed to a sanitarium, sparing her daughter Myrtle Mae and their family from future embarrassment. 

Problems arise, however, when Veta herself is mistakenly assumed to be on the verge of lunacy when she explains to doctors that years of living with Elwood’s hallucination have caused her to see Harvey also. The doctors commit Veta instead of Elwood, but when the truth comes out, the search is on for Elwood and his invisible companion. 

When he shows up at the sanitarium looking for his lost friend Harvey, it seems that the mild-mannered Elwood’s delusion has had a strange influence on more than one of the doctors. Only at the end does Veta realize that maybe Harvey isn’t so bad after all.

The play premiered on November 1, 1944 at the 48th Street Theatre on Broadway. The playwright Mary Chase received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the work in 1945.

The show runs through Saturday night at . All tickets are available at the door: $7 for adults and $5 for students and seniors.

The cast of Whitefish Bay students includes:

Myrtle Mae Simmons (played by Brigid McBride)

Veta Louise Simmons (Katie Bentley)

Elwood P. Dowd (Rolands Lauzums)

Miss Johnson (Sarah Sapiro)

Mrs. Ethel Chauvenet (Kelsey Pfeifer)

Ruth Kelly, R.N. (Kiaran Hartnett)

Duane Wilson (Matt Klein)

Lyman Sanderson, M.D (Braden Bjella)

William R. Chumley, M.D. (Zev Woskoff)

Betty Chumley (Meredith Head)

Judge Omar Gaffney (Harrison Gabel)

E. J. Lofgren (Stefan Schallack)