Jim Parsons Eyes Starring Role in Broadway Revival of Harvey

Emmy winner Jim Parsons is “in talks” to play Elwood P. Dowd in a spring 2012 Broadway revival of Mary Chase's Pulitzer Prize-winning comedy Harvey, according to The New York Times. The production, which is contingent on Parsons’ schedule playing physicist Sheldon Cooper in TV’s The Big Bang Theory, will reportedly be mounted by Roundabout Theatre Company.

The title character in Harvey is a six-foot-tall rabbit invisible to everyone except Elwood, much to the exasperation of his sister, Veta. The play opened on Broadway in 1944 starring Frank Fay and Josephine Hull. The 1950 movie version starred Jimmy Stewart and Hull, who won an Oscar for her performance. Stewart reprised his star turn in a 1970 Broadway revival that co-starred Helen Hayes as Veta.

Parsons made his Broadway debut in the spring of 2011 as gay activist Tommy Boatwright in the Tony-winning revival of Larry Kramer’s The Normal Heart.