* = Winner

Tony Award Nominations:

Don’t Dress for Dinner
Best Performance by an Actress in a Featured Role in a Play – Spencer Kayden
Best Costume Design of a Play – William Ivey Long

Man and Boy
Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Play – Frank Langella

The Road to Mecca
Best Lighting Design of a Play – Peter Kaczorowski

Full list of nominees.

Drama Desk Nominations:

Death Takes a Holiday
Outstanding Musical
Outstanding Actor in a Musical – Kevin Earley
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Musical – Matt Cavenaugh
Outstanding Director of a Musical – Doug Hughes
Outstanding Music – Maury Yeston
Outstanding Lyrics – Maury Yeston
Outstanding Book of a Musical – Thomas Meehan and Peter Stone
Outstanding Costume Design – Catherine Zuber
Outstanding Lighting Design – Kenneth Posner
Outstanding Sound Design in a Musical – Jon Weston
Outstanding Orchestrations – Larry Hochman

Sons of the Prophet
Outstanding Actor in a Play – Santino Fontana
Sam Norkin Off Broadway Award – Stephen Karam: The profoundly moving Sons of the Prophet confirmed his status as one of the most promising playwrights of his generation.

The Road to Mecca
Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play – Jim Dale

Full list of nominees.

Drama League Nominations:

Sons of the Prophet
Distinguished Performance Award: Santino Fontana

Man and Boy
Distinguished Performance Award: Frank Langella

The Road to Mecca
Distinguished Performance Award: Rosemary Harris

Look Back in Anger
Distinguished Revival of a Play
Distinguished Performance Award: Matthew Rhys

Read the full list of nominees.

Outer Critics Circle Award Nominations:

Death Takes a Holiday
Outstanding New Off-Broadway Musical
Outstanding New Score (Broadway of Off-Broadway)
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical — Rebecca Luker

Sons of the Prophet
*Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play
Outstanding Actor in a Play — Santino Fontana
Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play — Joanna Gleason

Don’t Dress for Dinner
*Outstanding Featured Actress in a Play — Spencer Kayden
Outstanding Costume Design (Play or Musical) — William Ivey Long

Read the full list of nominees.

New York Drama Critics’ Circle Awards:

Sons of the Prophet
*Best Play

Full list of awards.

Lucille Lortel Award Nominations:

Death Takes a Holiday
Outstanding Costume Design — Catherine Zuber

Sons of the Prophet
*Outstanding Play
*Outstanding Lead Actor — Santino Fontana

Look Back in Anger
Outstanding Revival
Outstanding Director — Sam Gold
*Outstanding Featured Actor — Adam Driver
Outstanding Scenic Design — Andrew Lieberman

Read the full list of nominees.

Before rehearsals began, Education Dramaturg Ted Sod sat down with Director Scott Ellis to discuss his thoughts on Harvey.

Ted Sod: How did the idea of doing Harvey with Jim Parsons come about?

Scott Ellis: The production was my idea. It was a play that had been sent to me to look at and I was taken by it. I think I’m drawn to anything that has not been done often. I just thought it was a lovely story and I realized a lot of people didn’t know it. When we were thinking about casting and who we could cast as Elwood, Jim Parsons’s name came up and we went out to Los Angeles and did a reading with him. I thought he was wonderful and brought the qualities I was looking for in that role. That’s how it all came together.

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Before rehearsals began, Education Dramaturg Ted Sod sat down with Actor Jim Parsons to discuss his role in Harvey.

Ted Sod: Can you tell us about yourself? Where were you born and educated? When did you decide to become an actor?

Jim Parsons: I was born in Houston, Texas and I lived there until I was about 27 or so. I went to undergrad at the University of Houston. I did a lot of theatre in Houston in addition to being at the university. Looking back, it’s fun to see how important that was to me. I learned a lot in class but I learned much more by having to get out there and perform. I was very fortunate. There is a Shakespeare festival that the university had an affiliation with and although it wouldn’t guarantee a part, it certainly guaranteed that the students would be involved. So I was a part of this Shakespeare festival as well as a children’s theatre festival. There was a company of actors and writers, really a company of misfits in a way that I had the opportunity to work with. We got to do all sorts of work, everything from Beckett to Guys and Dolls, so I had a wide and varied playground in Houston.

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Harvey, the invisible rabbit at the center of Mary Chase’s Harvey, is a pooka from Celtic mythology, plopped into the middle of an American family’s struggle to fit into society. Chase, like many first-generation Americans, wove the folklore of her family’s homeland into tales set in her own time and place.

Mary Coyle Chase was born on February 25, 1906, in Denver, Colorado. Her mother, Mary McDonough, emigrated from Londenderry, Ireland at the age of sixteen, following four older brothers to Colorado’s gold rush. McDonough later married Frank Coyle. Chase was the last of their four children, born nine years after her nearest sibling. The Coyle family was poor but stable, making a life in the working class, immigrant neighborhoods of Denver.

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“Pooka. From old Celtic mythology. A fairy spirit in animal form.  Always very large. The pooka appears here and there, now and then, to this one and that one at his own caprice.  A wise but mischievous creature.  Very fond of rum-pots, crackpots…” (Wilson)

“Lord, what fools these mortals be” – Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream.

This definition of a “pooka” read in the play brings to mind the kind of magical, mischievous characters from Shakespeare’s comedies: the fairies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream who use potions to manipulate young lovers, or the sprite Ariel who enchants the island castaways of The Tempest. Characters like Puck and Ariel are visible to an audience, but not to the mortal characters with whom they intervene, and this allows for hilarious comic situations. On a metaphorical level, they may represent irrational human forces—the intoxication of love or the delusionary influence of power. How might we understand the magical but invisible presence of the pooka Harvey?

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Harvey first hit the scene back in 1944 and was last seen on Broadway in 1970. While many decades have passed since that appearance, I doubt that it will surprise many people attending this new production to learn who Harvey really is: a big white rabbit, or, to be exact, a pooka measuring six feet three-and-a-half inches tall. He also happens to be invisible. For some reason, the revelation of Harvey’s identity is hardly a “spoiler.” The basics of this silly-seeming story are familiar to many: A man named Elwood P. Dowd carries on conversations with a giant rabbit who cannot be seen or heard by anyone else. Embarrassed by Elwood’s behavior, his sister seeks to have him committed, and she spends much of the play trying to convince a sanitarium to take him off her hands. This description might make the play sound like mere fluff or amusing hijinks, but I don’t think Harvey would be so present in our collective memory if the play were just that. So why has it endured? Of course, the play won the Pulitzer Prize and was turned into a hit film starring Jimmy Stewart, but I honestly don’t think those accolades can completely explain why Harvey has burrowed his way into the common vernacular.

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