HOPPING into the county tomorrow will be a 6ft tall invisible rabbit intent on making a stage appearance – if you can spot him.

Mary Chase’s Pulitzer prize-winning comedy about a man’s friendship with this invisible creature – who is named Harvey, will bound on stage at Malvern’s Festival Theatre on Tuesday night for a five-night run until Saturday, February 28, prior to its West End run.

The ever popular Maureen Lipman will be playing Veta, who tries to get her brother, Elwood P Dowd played by TV’s Gimme Gimme Gimme star and Olivier award-winning actor James Dreyfus, committed rather than risk the family’s reputation.

Unfortunately Elwood has only one character flaw: an unwavering friendship with this sizeable and invisible rabbit and in order to save the family's reputation, Elwood's sister Veta takes him to see psychiatrist Dr William Chumley. But when the doctor mistakenly commits anxiety-ridden Veta, instead of her brother, it sets off an hilarious whirlwind of confusion and chaos as everyone tries to catch a man and his invisible rabbit.

This new production of Harvey is produced by Don Gregory, who produced the play on Broadway in 2012 with Jim Parsons as Elwood. He also produced a television version with Leslie Nielsen in 1998.

Don Gregory’s other Broadway productions include the recent highly acclaimed production of The Belle of Amherst with Joely Richardson and the original production of the same play with Julie Harris, My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison, Camelot with Richard Burton, Othello with James Earl Jones and Christopher Pummer and Clarence Darrow with Henry Fonda.

Harvey premiered on Broadway in 1944, winning writer Mary Chase the Pulitzer Prize for Drama the following year. The production was directed by Antoinette Perry, after whom the Tony Awards are named.

The play premiered in London in 1949 at the Prince of Wales Theatre. In 1950, Mary Chase adapted her play for the big screen, with James Stewart in the role of Elwood, and he went on to star in the Broadway and London revivals of the stage play – in 1970 with Helen Hayes on Broadway and in 1975 with Mona Washbourne at the Prince of Wales Theatre.