Harvey

I think its fair to say this is the only time I will go and see a play about a giant invisible rabbit. Not because it wasn't an enjoyable play, but because there aren't going to be many plays in this particular genre.

Actually this is a play based on farce and whimsy. Harvey is the invisible rabbit that is the friend of the hero of the story, a kindly eccentric called Elwood (played by James Dreyfuss) who drives his sister and niece mad because he insists that he spends all his time with the said rabbit (which of course talks and likes drinking in bars). Worse still, he insists on introducing him to their friends. So eventually his sister (Maureen Lipman, yet again doing an  American accent which seems almost de riguer for her now) does the only sensible thing and attempts to get him put in a private mental institution.

Here the farce works nicely as the junior doctor convinces himself that she, rather than the nice brother, must be the deluded one and puts her in the straight jacket.

That is really where the farce ends and the whimsy begins, because it turns out that the invisible rabbit is real (yes I know, but it works.) The moral in the end is that its better being eccentric and believing in something odd than being sane but soulless and unhappy.