Thursday 22 July 2010

When I’m asked what it’s like playing in such a successful comedy as Harvey, my answer often is that it reminds me of the summer stock shows of my youth.

As an impressionable 13-year-old , I performed in Peterborough and Port Carling with The Straw Hat Players in a series of plays with such actors as Nancy Kerr (later to be a Shaw Festival stalwart) and young Timothy Findley.  I was thrilled by the gales of laughter that greeted our comedies.  Happy vacationers from the Muskoka or Kawartha lodges and cottages would come out after supper to enjoy these plays as their summer entertainment.  On certain days our audience reactions in Harvey remind me of that completely pure enjoyment, an absolutely free, unchecked laughter that sometimes seems to be becoming less frequent in daily life.

Recently, though, I’ve come to realize that Harvey means more to people than just an evening’s celebration.  Our usual house manager, Laura Cahill, gave me my first clue.  She told me that audiences for Harvey were the happiest and friendliest ones she ever remembered in her 15 years at The Shaw.

“And if they’re not when they come in,” she went on, “they are when they come out.”  When I questioned her, she told me more: how a patron who was impatient and rude with her on arrival, sought her out after the show to apologize.

“It’s happened to me twice,” she said.

Apparently this joyous comedy, often attended by whole families together, is also communicating its message of tolerance in a way that is not only direct, but effective!