Theatre review: Harold and Maude

What binds the duo are their differences. Harold has an obsession with death rooted in his Catholicism. Maude has a non-conformist love of life rooted in what we infer is her Jewishness. Her husband was killed in the camps. Indeed, her entire joie de vivre is, it’s suggested, derived from knowing the value of life learned from that experience.

Tom Southerland’s inventive production emphasises charm, rather than transgression, a quality jauntily emphasised by his cast of actor musicians. Michael Bruce’s playful score is a perfect parody of the early ’70s musical taste. But those who know the film will miss not only Cat Stevens’s songs but an edgy sense of risk. There is a moment in the film where establishment types declare their disgust at Harold’s infatuation, the funniest when a psychologist admits that the Oedipal urge to sleep with one’s mother is a very common psychosis. But grandmother?

Nothing so funny exists here. Except perhaps the portrayal of a seal which mischievous Maude has liberated from a zoo and temporarily installed in her apartment. It’s a role for which Samuel Townsend (who also plays a policeman) barks so uncannily and hilariously that it might have been more diverting had Harold’s infatuation been for the animal. (After all, Edward Albee’s Who is Sylvia? is about a man’s love for a goat.)

For the most part, the evening plateaus on a level of middling amusement. Milner is very good as the po-faced Harold. And, as the wise old bird Maude, Hancock exudes a sensuality that prevents Harold’s infatuation from appearing entirely perverse.

But this show takes a long time to deliver its simple carpe diem lesson.