Thursday, April 28th at Normal West was the opening night of “Harvey,” a play about Elwood P. Dowd and his best friend who is an imaginary 6-foot tall rabbit named Harvey.

Senior Nick Koch plays the lead character, Elwood P. Dowd who lives with his sister, Veta Louise Simmons, played by senior Emilie Hapgood. His niece Myrtle Mae, is played by Alex Rich, also a senior.

Elwood introduces his imaginary rabbit friend to guests, which leaves his sister and niece embarrassed. Later the two decide to check Elwood into an insane asylum.

Dr. Sanderson, played by senior Tanner Star, is the doctor at the sanitarium who makes a mistake about who should be admitted, which creates a string of complications throughout the show.

Harvey is set in 20th century America during times when mental institutes were used as a way to relieve families of mentally ill relatives.

Harvey is a mix of humor and earnest themes of the importance of human imagination in the eyes of the “normal” and “sane” people.

“It is a romp, you will thoroughly enjoy our production of Harvey,” Star says about the show.

The actors and actresses seemed very happy about their performance on opening night.

Koch talked about the show saying, “It’s a little different, but it ends up being a really cute and meaningful show in the end.”

He went on to get sentimental about being a part of the production as a senior.”This was like a reconnection, one final hoorah of us all doing something together. So that was really special.”