Robert Tanitch reviews Harold and Maude at Charing Cross Theatre, London WC2
Harold is 18 years old and falls in love with Maud who is 79 years old. The roles were created by Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon in a film directed by Hal Ashby, which had a hostile press on its release in 1971 and did very badly at the box-office.
Critics found the comedy in bad taste. Audiences didn’t like the idea of an 18-year-old boy having sex with a 79-year-old woman.
Bill Milner and Sheila Hancock in Harold and Maude
It was and still is OK for an old man and a young girl to have a September/May relationship but not the other way round.
The film was dismissed as gross, freaky and macabre. Variety said it had “all the fun of a burning orphanage.”
The film, however, gained a following amongst college and university students and became a cult success.
Harold is a rich boy obsessed with death. He regularly attends funerals of strangers and constantly stages fake suicides, hanging himself, cutting his wrists, shooting himself and committing hara-kiri. His mother is totally unfazed.
Maud is a poor old woman, a free spirit, who loves trees, flowers, seals and other people’s homes and furniture. She has a zest for life and wants everybody to try something new every day.
There was a stage production in New York in 1980. It ran for just four performances.
Maude is played by Sheila Hancock, who has just celebrated her 85th birthday and is totally at ease with the whimsy. Bill Milner is Harold.
Thom Southerland, artistic director of Charing Cross, attempts to do something charming by adding music, which is played by the supporting cast, seven actor-musicians.
Francis O’Connor’s set and the posturing musicians made me feel I was watching a surreal 1930s French romantic fable. The stage version is never as good as the movie.
Colin Higgins’s screenplay has been watered down. It has lost its social, political and sexual edge. There is no sex in this production. The fake suicides are no longer as funny and the specious philosophising can be squirm-making.
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