Theater: Dearest Rabbit

The most endearing invisible character in U.S. stage annals is a 6-ft. 21-in. rabbit named Harvey. Equally endearing is Harvey's alcoholically bemused pal and constant companion, Elwood P. Dowd. The Mary Chase play was a charmer when it first appeared in 1944, and it is a charmer now. It carries with it a nostalgia for more innocent and less harried days. An added and substantial bonus is that the present revival brings James Stewart back to the stage, after a 22-year absence, in the role of Elwood, a part he first inherited from the late Frank Fay.

Like his friend Henry Fonda, Stewart makes a masterfully assertive use of understatement. If he does not always speak laconically, he moves laconically. He belongs to a generation of actors whose concern for their work gives a specific gravity to the roles they play. He minds not only the ps and qs of acting but the entire alphabet of stagecraft.

Things Freud Never Dreamed. Similarly letter-perfect in stage tactics and command is Helen Hayes whose "farewell" appearances in recent years fortunately seem to constitute a whole new career. As Elwood's solicitous sister, she is a perfect foil to Stewart—fluttery, flustered and both a little ashamed and a little proud of her brother and his impalpable rabbit, the existence of which she alternately denies and affirms. Her attempts to place Elwood in a psychiatric clinic and the ways in which those plans backfire constitute an inordinately pleasant evening in the theater.

As the chief psychiatrist, Henderson

Forsythe, abetted by his chief aide, Jesse White, comes apart delightfully as he moves from urbane scientific skepticism to a kind of manic trust that there may be more things in Elwood P. Dowd's heaven and earth than are dreamt of in Freudian psychology. The play's lasting appeal seems to suggest that many an American secretly yearns to shuck off the work ethic, drop every irksome responsibility, and just frisk about with some fabulous Harvey of his own.