1945 was a strange amoral year in the American theater.  This is the year that Rodgers and Hammerstein's Carousel premiered.  While it revolutionized the American musical, it contained a disconcerting moral:  it's okay to beat your wife as long as you really, really, really love her.  As a result, it has become almost distasteful when produced today.  That same year, Mary Chase's play Harvey won the Pulitzer Prize for drama, and went on to become a permanent fixture of WWII-era American culture when it was made into a film with James Stewart.  Harvey would have you believe that the best lifestyle is one in which you drop out of society, and spend your days in bars slowly poisoning your liver; and that alcohol-induced hallucinations are not a symptom of serious illness, but a good luck charm.  This moral plays just as strangely today (though not as offensively) as that of Carousel.  But Harvey is back anyway, in a largely successful production currently being mounted by Peninsula Community Theatre.

The play is incredibly well paced, and Diana has done a good job of directing this production which is affable, and very well staged.  The set design by Patty Ellison is just great, attractive and functional, and manages to utilize a necessary unit set (PCT's Village Theatre is a great space, but not very large), while convincingly changing between the play's two settings.  Ellison is a talented set designer, and I look forward to seeing more of her work in the future.  Even the textiles and furniture are just right.  If the design requires scene changes that take some time, well, that's okay.  Harvey is an old play and is designed to accommodate these kinds of man-powered scene changes.  I do wish that a portrait hanging over the fireplace of Veta Lousie's library hadn't looked like a holdover from a high school play, but that is a very small quibble over an otherwise perfect design.

Julie Peroski's costumes are just fine, evoking the bygone days of America where men wore suits and hats everyday, even for leisure activities.  This is somewhat odd since the program for the show states that the time is the present.  It's not, of course.  It doesn't look it, either.  And how could it in a play where the expected habit of men wearing hats becomes a major plot point? 

I do have to say some of the casting is bizarre.  The age disparity between characters is somewhat startling.  Ms. Marley Smith is a few too many years older than Mr. Cauthen who plays her younger brother, and he seems somewhat younger than Ms. Johnson whom he repeatedly calls "My little niece."  This isn't ideal, but it becomes easy to overlook as the play goes on.  As it is wont to be in community theatre, some of the acting is stiff.  Ms. Johnson is particularly forced as Myrtle Mae, and a subplot involving the near romance between a psychiatrist (Anthony Brach) and a nurse (Alexandra Toeniessen) falls flat due to a palpable lack of spark between the two performers.  But two performances are the key to what really makes Harvey work.

Mr. Cauthen's Elwood P. Dowd is perfect.

Linda Marley Smith is also wonderful as Veta Louise.  She is a real talent, with a great sense of comic timing.  Her performance is focused, energetic, and she never makes a wrong choice.  The performances of these two actors (particularly in their scenes together) work so well that it becomes easy to forgive the obvious discrepancy in their ages, and you see what you always hope to see at the theater:  two talented actors enjoying themselves.  These two performances alone are worth the price of admission, but there is much to reccomend about the production. 

Harvey is far from perfect, but it's a great family-friendly holiday offering.  And, personally, I'm glad to see a theater going out on a limb and offering an alternative to the myriad productions of A Christmas Carol that clog area stages this time of year like so much Crisco in an aortic artery.

Harvey runs at Peninsula Community Theatre until December 16th. Call 595-5728 for tickets and information.