Theater review: 'Harold & Maude': A charming musical at TheatreWorks Theater review: 'Harold & Maude': A charming musical at TheatreWorks (August 03, 2005)

By Bryan Wiggin

Almanac Theater Critic

Released in 1971, "Harold & Maude" became what is known as a cult film, meaning that a few people watch it many times. Once was enough for me.

Once is also enough for the musical version of the story being presented by TheatreWorks. But it's a very enjoyable once.

Once upon a time -- about 1971 -- there was a teenage boy named Harold. Harold was a very unhappy, lonely boy whose mother didn't understand him. One can sympathize with the mother, for Harold's continuing faux suicide attempts would wear on anyone's nerves.

The opening scene shows Harold ascending a step ladder, placing a noose around his neck, and kicking the ladder aside. His mother's response is on the order of "Please, Harold, not again."

Harold likes to attend funerals -- anybody's funeral. At one of these he meets Maude, a woman who shares his interest. But Maude, at 79, is as free-spirited as Harold is inhibited. She loosens him up, though, when they go to a graveyard to plant a sickly tree that Maude has liberated from the New York pavement.

The liberation continues at Maude's quaintly cluttered apartment, where she turns him on to marijuana -- though not much is made of this. She also teaches him to dance and to play the spoons -- which doesn't promise a path to Carnegie Hall.

The flamboyant highlight of the show is Sunshine, who wears a skin-tight, fringe-flowing jumpsuit of startling pink. She continually refers to one "Lance," who was her guru and who, among other things, taught her to breathe with a passionate in and out that leads her to orgasm.

When Harold kills himself in front of her, she exclaims "Wonderful!" -- then picks up the stage knife with its retracting blade, sings a few lines from Macbeth to the tune of "Try to Remember," and stabs herself.

While these deaths are merely pretend, Maude's is real. On her 80th birthday, Harold gives her an engagement ring, which she promptly tosses away so she won't have to worry about losing it. But she had swallowed some pills about an hour earlier, because it's time for her to leave.

Harold weeps and wails at her dying, but, a happy ending being de rigueur, ends the show by singing and dancing the song she has taught him.

Pamela Myers as Maude and Eric Shelley as Harold give rather low-key performances. It's only at Maude's death that Mr. Shelley lets passion fly.

As his mother, Alice Vinneau is just right -- huffy and stuffy and fed up with Harold's adolescent tricks. Alison Ewing plays several parts, but wins a cataract of applause, cheers and whistles as Sunshine. And Daniel Marcus shines as a General Patton figure exhorting Harold to join the Army and become a man, and as a rotund motorcycle policeman done up in boots, shades, and all.

Artistic Director Robert Kelley has everything in place and functioning smoothly -- a firm hand at the helm. William Liberatore elicits good playing from the pit band. There's a good mix of costumes from Cathleen Edwards and skillful lighting from Steven B. Mannshardt and A. William Bakal.

"Harold & Maude" is a very entertaining show. You may enjoy it even more than once.
INFORMATION

"Harold & Maude," by Tom Jones and Joseph Thalken, is being presented by TheatreWorks at the Lucie Stern Theatre, 1305 Middlefield Road in Palo Alto through August 14. For information, call 903-6000, or go to theatreworks.org.

E-mail a friend a link to this story.