Linda Marlowe and Patrick Walshe McBride are today announced as the new stars of the black comedy romantic drama Harold and Maude. Their first performance is Monday April 2 as the acclaimed production extends its run at Charing Cross Theatre by six weeks to Saturday May 12.
They will take over from Sheila Hancock and Bill Milner, who will play their final performances as scheduled on Saturday March 31. All the rest of original cast are staying for the extended season.
Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins is directed by Thom Southerland, Artistic Director of Charing Cross Theatre. It has been nominated for 5 Off West End Awards – Best Female: Sheila Hancock, Best Male: Bill Milner, Best Costume: Jonathan Lipman, Best Set: Francis O’Connor, Best Lighting: Matt Clutterham.
Harold and Maude is an idiosyncratic romantic fable told though the eyes of the most unlikely pairing: a compulsive, self-destructive young man and a devil-may-care, septuagenarian bohemian. Dame Marjorie “Maude” Chardin is a free spirit who wears her hair in braids, believes in living each day to its fullest, and “trying something new every day”. Harold Parker Chasen is an 18-year-old man who is obsessed with death, attends funerals of strangers for entertainment and stages elaborate fake suicides. Through meeting Maude at a funeral, he discovers joy in living for the first time. Part dark comedy and romantic innocence, Harold and Maude dissolves the line between darkness and light along with ones that separate people by class, gender and age.
Photo: Darren Bell
