Cory Wojcik, Mark Crawford (photo by Leif Norman)
Rabbit Season
I reject your reality and substitute my own.
by Edgar Governo
Since my 11-year-old nephew had never seen a play at The John Hirsch Theatre in Winnipeg, I decided to have him join me for the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Harvey--the whimsical story of the outgoing Elwood and his titular best friend, an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit. At the intermission, he turned to me and noted that Elwood acted "a lot like Doctor Sheldon Cooper."
What I already knew which my nephew didn't when he made that comment was that Jim Parsons, the actor who plays Sheldon in the sitcom The Big Bang Theory, had starred as Elwood in a Broadway revival of Harvey last year. As such, I sincerely hope that Mark Crawford was not deliberately choosing to play Elwood in the Parsons mode based on the same knowledge, but his seeming Texas drawl (which matches the accent of Parsons but not that of any other character in this production) and the mannerisms he employs in his performance are disturbingly similar.
