Dead Kennedys singer plays lead in Moline play

Playcrafters Barn Theatre’s next show will star the lead singer of The Dead Kennedys in his first acting role.

Ronald “Skip” Greer of Preemption — lead vocalist for the punk rock band Dead Kennedys – will play Elwood P. Dowd in the 1944 classic “Harvey,” by Mary Chase, directed by Jake Ladd. The show will run on Feb. 9-11 and 16-18 at the Barn Theatre, 4950 35^th Ave., Moline.

Greer joined the band in 2008, replacing Jeff Penalty and is the band’s longest-serving vocalist. Now in his late 50s, he is married to Playcrafters board member Jane Watson (a 1986 Augustana alum), and he’s supplied music for Playcrafters’ “The Odd Couple” and “Almost, Maine.” Watson acted in “Twelve Angry Jurors” at Playcrafters in November 2022.

Greer said Monday at the theater they were “COVID refugees,” moving to the Quad Cities after about 10 years in Brooklyn, N.Y. He and Watson met in New York City in the late ’90s.

“From my music standpoint, I’ve always been attracted to odd areas like the Quad Cities. You know about Daytrotter,” Greer said, noting the Dead Kennedys never recorded for Daytrotter. He has a local band called Running Man, which performed the very last show at RIBCO in December. Dead Kennedys is still touring, including in Australia later this year.

“I am honored to be in this cast. A lot of stuff I do is artistically parallel,” Greer said. Before Dead Kennedys, he was in a band called Winona Ryders.

“Harvey” is his first acting role. As singer with Dead Kennedys, Greer said his role of more of “a buffoon.” That is in a “dark, satirical way,” he said. “It’s being amused by the absurdity of life.”

Jake Ladd (who has had a star-studded show business career) has directed “Harvey” four times before, starting in the mid-1980s. He did a production with Eddie Albert, at a dinner theater in Lubbock, Tex., and another in Washington, D.C. starring Buddy Ebsen. Ladd’s last “Harvey” was in Mission Hills, Calif., at a dinner theater around 1991.

“I am very happy with this cast,” he said Monday of Playcrafters. “We took our time casting it.” It was a challenge to find the right Elwood.

“We extended the auditions, and then Skip happened,” Ladd said. “That was a phenomenon. Skip was performing somewhere out of town, and he sent a video of one of the monologues, and I was knocked out by it. It was one of the monologues I had been auditioning people. Very few people understood the concept of it and what the play is about. And Skip’s reading just totally blew me away.”

The Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy centers on Elwood and his best friend, Harvey — a pooka, who’s a six-foot tall, invisible rabbit. When Elwood begins introducing Harvey around town, his embarrassed sister, Veta Louise, and her daughter, Myrtle Mae, determine to commit Elwood to a sanitarium. A mistake is made, however, and Veta is committed rather than Elwood.

Eventually, the mistake is realized, and a frantic search begins for Elwood and the invisible pal, which ends with Elwood appearing, voluntarily, at the sanitarium. In the end, however, Veta realizes that she loves her brother and his invisible best friend just as they are, and doesn’t want either of them to change.

The Moline cast features Don Faust and Kassidy Holdridge, Davenport; Suzanne Braswell, Kendall Burnett, Kady Derbyshire, Dave Moreland and Zach Zelnio, Moline; as well as Christine Hicks and Tim Burrow, Rock Island.

“It’s always good to have a familiar comedy when you’re getting your audience back after the holidays,” Ladd said. Playcrafters last staged it nine years ago, starring Mike Kelly as Elwood.

“In my opinion, this is really an ensemble piece,” Greer said. “I can’t emphasize enough how much of a new experience this is for me. It’s having faith in myself, not getting scared in front of people, which I think is a large thing.”

Happiness and acceptance

Chase earned the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for “Harvey” in 1945 (besting “The Glass Menagerie”). It has been adapted for film and television several times, most notably in a 1950 film starring James Stewart and Josephine Hull.

In its first Broadway run, “Harvey” ran for 1,775 performances, making it the fifth longest-running Broadway show up to that point.

Ladd said that in “Harvey,” Elwood is the only content character; others are all unhappy in some way. “Elwood just sort of floats above all of it, in his basic kindness,” he said. “He’s the only happy soul in the play.”

“Is it because he has Harvey or that Harvey has him?” Ladd asked. “There’s a very serious element, thematically, to this play. It is high farce. But there’s very serious subtext about acceptance, tolerance, and the power of human kindness.”

Mary Chase often wrote about societal acceptance, something she went through herself, the director said. She lived in Denver and wanted to be part of Denver society and was never accepted.

“And she wasn’t accepted in the playwriting community either,” Ladd said. “They viewed her as this housewife dabbling in playwriting. Her first attempt was not successful, and her second attempt was ‘Harvey.'”

Chase was inspired to write it after a neighbor lost a son in World War II, as something to cheer up her neighbor. The idea for the play came to her in a dream, where she saw a psychiatrist being chased by a rabbit, Ladd said.

The play addresses acceptance of the idea that anyone can have a friend who is “different,” Ladd said. “You can embrace it.”

“It’s a remarkable play — it’s filled with dialogue that is of a very genteel style,” he said.  “It’s one of the very early plays that dealt with the idea of mental health. One of the very famous quotes from the play is when Elwood says, ‘Doctor, I’ve wrestled with reality for 40 years and I’ve finally won out over it’.”

“I’ve had an incredible amount of fun,” he said of the new production, “This is not a style of theater people are familiar with anymore.”

Greer said memorizing lines has been a big challenge for him.

“He started rehearsal with a great sense of being able to perform, to take the stage,” Ladd said. “The type of stagecraft necessary for theater is very different than performing in a concert. So Skip has not only had a barrel full of words to learn, but also a lot of stagecraft.”

“He’s got a cast, they’re an amazing cast and they have a lot of experience,” he said. “So he’s had to chase the train for a while. Now I’m so proud of him, it’s unbelievable.”

In the play, it’s not just Elwood who sees Harvey — we learn most of the cast does as well, Ladd said. The characters want Elwood not to bring Harvey around. A few characters don’t see Harvey.

The rabbit is never described as being imaginary, just invisible, Ladd said. He does make an appearance at the end of the play.

“There’s a lot of little magic that happens before the audience’s eyes,” he said, noting pieces of furniture that seemingly move by themselves. “That’s a lot of fun for the audience, but all that has to be engineered in.”

Ladd not only directs the show, but he did the set design and construction, with the help of Thayne Lamb and Andrew Derbyshire. Lamb is assistant director and stage manager.

A 65-year-old Southern California native, Ladd portrayed Victor Velasco a year ago in the Playcrafters production of Neil Simon’s “Barefoot in the Park.”

The weekend “Harvey” closes, Ladd will start Music Guild auditions for his summer directing job, the classic musical “Fiddler on the Roof” (to be performed in August).

The auditions for summer Guild shows are Feb. 17-18 and Feb. 24 (with callbacks Feb. 25 if needed). “Fiddler” auditions specifically will be:

• Feb. 17: 12:30 p.m. to 2:45 p.m.

• Feb. 18: Noon to 1:30 p.m.

• Feb. 24: 3 p.m. to 5:15 p.m.

“Harvey” performances will begin at 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays and a 3 p.m. matinee on Sundays. Tickets are available on the website HERE or by calling 309-762-0330 to make a reservation. Tickets will also be for sale at the door (while available), general admission is $15 ($13 for military and seniors).

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