Metro Pulse/Backstage/Harvey

Comment
on this story

What:
Harvey

When:
November 14-17, 21-24, 8 p.m. evenings, 3 p.m. Sunday matinees

Where:
Black Box Theatre, Homberg Place

Cost:
$12, $10 students/seniors. Call 546-4280 for info.

Harvey is first in the Tennessee Stage Company's "Timeless Works" series

by Paige M. Travis

For the 75th play in its 12-year history, the Tennessee Stage Company is going to tackle a classic play written by someone other than the Bard. The company that brings us the East Tennessee Shakespeare in the Park every summer now presents Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning Harvey as the first offering of the newly invented Timeless Works series.

When TSC Executive Director Tom Parkhill and Brandon Daughtry Slocum came up with the idea to include a "timeless work" in a season already consisting of a Shakespeare festival and the New Play Festival, the budget for 2002-2003 had already been settled. But instead of waiting until 2003 to start the series, being self-proclaimed impatient people, they decided to do it this year and ask local actors and theater production crew members to donate their time in order to bring Harvey to life. Many of the actors involved have worked with TSC before, including Jenny Ballard, Susannah Devereaux, Brian Bonner, and Bruce Borin, who has been friends with Parkhill for 20-plus years. Borin directed Parkhill in the first-ever TSC production.

"The Timeless Works series is about doing the standards, the classics, things that are good for the whole family," says Slocum, who serves as director and designer for Harvey. "But it's all a fancy euphemism for 'plays Tom likes.'" She laughs. "But that's OK, because Tom has excellent taste."

Harvey is Parkhill's favorite play of all time. "I've always thought it was the perfect play. It's hysterically funny, but it's completely full of life lessons. If you listen to what people say in this play, you will learn almost everything you need to know to live a full life, to be a happy person." The play is about being compassionate with people who are different and misunderstood. Slocum is struck by the fact that Chase wrote Harvey during World War II, at a time when the world seemed full of hate and mistrust. "This show has something beautiful to say at a time that I think it's incredibly relevant," she says.

Another reason the play was chosen is because the characters seem tailor-made for many actors who have become familiar faces in TSC productions. Bruce Borin, an instructor at Roane State who most recently appeared in the Actors Co-op's Prelude to a Kiss, plays Dr. William Chumley, a psychiatrist whose patient (Elwood P. Dowd, played by Parkhill) sees the giant rabbit named Harvey. During his acting career Borin has appeared in more than 250 plays across the country, most of which he calculates were comedies of the dinner theater variety. "This is kind of getting back to the way I made my living many years ago, doing cheap kind of comedy. But it's fun," he says. "Chumley's a nice role because he's kind of bewildered by everything, and he ends up seeing Harvey too."

"We're getting together some of the best actors in town because we want to have fun together," Parkhill says. Plus, they can raise some money to help sustain a long-standing pillar of professional theater in Knoxville.

"I think most of the people involved in this show really understand that what they're doing is to benefit the Stage Company, and they care about the future of company," says Slocum, emphasizing the fact that the company consistently pays actors a competitive wage. Adding another play to the schedule means offering another paying gig to the actors of Knoxville and one more quality production to the theater-going public.

Audiences will be treated to the too-rarely seen talents of Parkhill, who was completely charming in last summer's TSC production of "Arms and the Man." This time around, "I'm the crazy guy who sees the rabbit," he says.

TSC recently became credit-card friendly, which means reservations for the nine performances of Harvey at the Black Box Theatre can be taken over the phone and held with a major credit card. Getting advanced tickets is particularly important because there are only 70 seats in the Black Box, which TSC is renting from the Actors Co-op. Parkhill notes that many people had to be turned away from a full house during the Shakespeare festival, and several recent Co-op's plays have sold out. The popularity of the film version of Harvey, starring Jimmy Stewart, will certainly draw a crowd, as will Parkhill's sheer enthusiasm for the work.

"The thing that makes theater for me is if you're interpreting a piece of literature that holds up," he says. He recalls having some fun doing less-than-stellar plays, but the experience doesn't compare with performing in a good play. "But it's just a different world when you're dealing with a piece of theatrical literature that sings, that has poetry and light. Every night you come in excited about getting to say these words and living in the world of this play—a world that's unique to this experience. It's just amazing. As an actor, that's what you live for: those opportunities."