Olivier Award winner Sheila Hancock will star in the London premiere of Colin Higgins’ Harold and Maude, which will begin performances February 19, 2018, prior to an official opening February 26 at Charing Cross Theatre.

Billed as a “black comedy romantic drama,” Harold and Maude will continue through March 31. Thom Southerland directs.

The romantic fable is told though the eyes of an unlikely pairing: a compulsive, self-destructive young man and a devil-may-care, septuagenarian bohemian.

Hancock's recent theatre roles in London include Edith “Big Edie” Ewing Bouvier Beale in Grey Gardens, Fraulein Schneider in Cabaret (for which she won an Olivier and Clarence Derwent Award), and Mother Superior in Sister Act the Musical. She was in the original London productions of Annie and Sweeney Todd and played Rose in Gypsy at West Yorkshire Playhouse.

Additional casting and creative team members will be announced at a later date.

Artistic Director of Charing Cross Theatre Southerland said in a statement, “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.”

Harold and Maude is produced by Patrick Gracey, Steven M. Levy, and Vaughan Williams.

For ticket information, visit CharingCrossTheatre.co.uk.

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