I know, I know, it’s Harvey, Harvey, Harvey all the time — or at least it seems that way!  Now a holdover of two weeks is planned, moving our closing date into the middle of November.  Our play is obviously attracting a wider and wider audience — and with sometimes surprising results.

Recently I took part in a concert for Music Niagara, the local music festival winding up its 2010 concerts this week.

Four actors from The Shaw have each done a Monday night concert on ‘Schumann and his Circle,’ and this has given us the opportunity to mix and mingle with accomplished artists from other disciplines.

For me, this has given rise to yet another Harvey story.  One of the musicians I met told me she had found watching the play a very emotional experience.  She found herself re-examining her own life priorities in the light of Elwood P. Dowd’s apparent philosophy of life (or, as Professor Robert Hetherington puts it in his program essay, “the Tao of Dowd”).

As young performers, many of us are urged to “Stay focussed”, to become single-minded in our quest for “success”. 

But how important are ambition and material success, in relation to the value we place on our relationships with those we love?  How much of our attention and energy does each of our priorities demand of us?  How do our expectations shift as we settle into a life path that may not hold all the rewards we were determined to win?  Does this change represent failure? 

While you’re enjoying the jokes and paradoxes of Harvey, could you actually be in the process of realigning and redesigning your own life?

Let me know.

                                                                                                                Guy Bannerman

P.S. Thanks, jazzbug2, for your comment! G.