Ever since he first graced the Broadway stage in 1944, Harvey the 6-foot-tall rabbit — well, 6 feet 3 and 1/2 inches tall, to be exact — has made quite an impression.

Playwright Mary Chase received the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1945 for the play.

The 1950 film adaptation of the play earned James Stewart an Oscar nomination for best actor. It has since been adapted for TV and film across the globe.

And now, in 2014, “Harvey” is being performed in front of Kitsap audiences at the Bremerton Community Theatre during September. The performance will kick off the 70th season of the Broadway play.

“It’s a very light-hearted comedy,” director Eric Spencer said. “It really does have a nice moral to it. In our particular production, we got a really good cast and very good production quality.”

As the story goes, Elwood spends his days with his best friend, Harvey, a rather large walking, talking rabbit. Of course, no one can see Harvey but Elwood. But people play along — from the neighborhood streets he walks along, to the bar he spends a considerable amount of time in.

But the invisible rabbit is not welcome by all.

“‘Harvey’ is a story set in the mid ’40s,” Spencer said. “There’s a woman — Veta — and she wants to introduce her daughter, Myrtle, to a younger crowd and get her into society.

“Her brother, Elwood Dowd, has a friend Harvey who is a 6-foot white rabbit that no one can see, but he introduces him to anyone he can. They want to get Elwood committed to a sanitarium because they consider him to be a little crazy for that.

“Veta takes him to the sanitarium and confusion and comedy ensues.”

In its seven decades, “Harvey” has been tackled by quite a range of theaters, though it has perhaps been most widely known for its film adaptation.

For Bremerton’s rendition, Spencer decided to keep the play as close to the original as possible, while retaining the style and charm of the film.

“Some people want to update things, but the way I was brought up was that this is what the playwright wanted and to deviate from that, it’s almost offending what the playwright put forth,” he said. “It’s their baby. It’s what they wanted to put into the world.”

While the Bremerton play does hearken back to the original and the film,  it does have a few minor differences from the film version.

“In the movie, there’s a bar location. What I like about this is that there is no drinking within the show,” Spenders said. “Elwood infers to it, but it’s not really about that.

“As an actor or as a director, if there is a movie, I’m very much about not watching the movie,” he said. “With this one, I told the cast that if they want to watch the movie, go ahead. I wanted to keep it within the style of the movie.”

Another minor difference may be the way actors take on the different characters. Spencer encouraged the cast to make the characters their own, such as Chris Dolan who plays Elwood.

“He’s very natural,” Spencer said. “What I like about him is that he brings his own personality to it, so it’s not just a Jimmy Stewart impression.

“I tend to, as a director and an actor, to act from self,” he said. “A lot of people think that they need to make themselves the character, but I approach it as making the character yourself.”

Spencer also notes the theater itself as an ideal place to see such a classic.

“If people have not come to see a show in our theater, it would behoove them to do that,” he said. “We got a really nice theater.”

‘Harvey’

Where: Bremerton Community Theatre, 599 Lebo Blvd., Bremerton.

When: Sept. 5-28. Fridays and Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2:30 p.m.

Tickets: $15 general admission; $13 students, seniors (62 and older) and military; $8 children 12 and younger.

Info: www.bctshows.com, 360-373-5152.