Word: elwood
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...Coyle Chase; produced by Brock Pemberton) is the funniest and most likable fantasy that Broadway has seen in years. Described in one sentence, this yarn about a balmy tosspot who knows an imaginary outsized rabbit named Harvey may suggest all the horrors of relentless whimsy. Distributed over three acts, Elwood P. Dowd and the hare of the dog that bit him become a delightful adventure in wackiness...
...biggest surprise of all, naturally, is "Harvey" himself. Harvey is the pooka, and the pooka is Harvey-he's the miracle that Elwood P. Dowd found leaning against a lamp post after a big night with the boys, and he quite thoroughly disturbs Elwood's sister, Vita, who thinks, but is not quite positive, that he is ruining her social reputation...
Frank Fay takes a vacation from musical comedy and variety to play Elwood with a quiet, wistful humor that in pure delight. If you've ever wondered whether Fay could do anything well but those wry and funny commentaries on song lyrics, here's your answer. Elwood is a gentle, vague soul who says he tried being smart for forty years and then took a crack at being pleasant, and he advises pleasant. Fay achieves a casual distinction that you would not be likely to expect from a vaudevillian...
...nudging Fay for honors is Josephine Hull, fresh from "Arsenic and Old Lace," and still possessed of a fresh and effervescent enough touch to carry some of "Harvey's" more lagging moments to an agreeable conclusion. Miss Hull is Vita; she loves her brother Elwood but that pooka has been scaring away all her guests. She tries to deposit Elwood in a straight jacket at Chumley's Rest, so she can forget the pooka and climb the social ladder with her niece, Myrtle. Naturally, she too becomes attached to Harvey before the affair is over...
Just as Dr. Chumley, the psychiatrist at the sanatarium, is about to give Elwood a shot of Formula X to cure what supposedly ails him, the taxi driver who has brought the Dowds to the institution comes in for his money. Vita and Myrtle find they're fresh out, so they stop the injection and tell Elwood to pay the man. Elwood in his pleasant and disarming way discusses life with the cab driver, invites him over to the house for dinner, and makes the duped young fellow forget all about the $2.75. But the cabbie likes Elwood...