Olivier Award-winning West End star Sheila Hancock is to star in the London premiere of the black comedy romantic drama Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins. The production will reunite Sheila with director Thom Southerland after their acclaimed sold-out success with the UK premiere of the musical Grey Gardens in 2016.
Harold and Maude will premiere at Charing Cross Theatre from Monday 19 February and run for a strictly limited run of 6 weeks only to Saturday 31 March, 2018.
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 (Sheila Hancock), 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.
Artistic Director of Charing Cross Theatre, Thom Southerland said: “I couldn’t be more thrilled to be bringing Colin Higgins’ masterpiece Harold and Maude to Charing Cross Theatre for its first ever London production. I am honoured and delighted to be teaming up again with Sheila Hancock on this incredible piece, which dares us to think beyond the obvious.”
