About the Play:

Harold and Maude has long been a favourite of acting teachers for Female Monologues.

Harold and Maude is a full-length black comedy romantic drama by Colin Higgins. A discontented, perpetually suicidal young man meets and becomes deeply attached to a free-spirited elderly woman in the author's stage adaptation of his cult movie hit. This stage version of Harold and Maude will certainly delight both aficionados of the film and new comers to the story.

Harold and Maude is an idiosyncratic fable told though the eyes of the most unlikely pairing: a compulsive, self-destructive 19 year old young man who attends funerals for entertainment and a devil-may-care, septuagenarian bohemian, Maude. Harold is the proverbial poor little rich kid. His alienation has caused him to attempt suicide several times, though these incidents are more cries for attention than actual attempts. His peculiar attachment to Maude, whom he meets at a funeral (a mutual passion) is what saves him and what captivates us. Through Colin Higgins's tale, we experience a way of seeing the world that looks directly into darkness, stresses our needs humour, the freedom to create and kindness while concluding that cynicism and despair are dead ends. Equal parts 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.

Harold and Maude was done first as a movie, appearing in 1971, and soon became profitable as well as a highly regarded cult classic. Colin Higgins adapted his own screenplay for the stage. The play premiered in 1972 in Paris and ran for seven years. It had long runs in 20 other counties and opened in 1980 on Broadway at the Martin Beck Theatre in New York City.

Cast: 8 female, 9 male

What people say:

"Offbeat upbeat comedy." — Christian Science Monitor

"You wouldn't expect that a play that opens with one of the leads dramatically faking his own suicide would be delightfully funny and yet Harold and Maude ... is just that. This quirky play is an adaption of the 1971 cult classic film of the same name and features some touching quiet moments alongside many laughs." — BroadwayWorld.com

About the Playwright:

Colin Higgins (1941-1988) was an Australian-American screenwriter, actor, director, and producer. Born in the South Pacific island of New Caledonia to an Australian mother and American father, he graduated from high school in Sydney, Australia and then moved with his family to Redwood, California. He wrote Harold and Maude when he was 28 years old and a film student at the University of California at Los Angeles; the 20-minute drama was originally to be the basis for his master's thesis. He was best known as the screenwriter, director, and producer of films such as Foul Play, and 9 to 5.