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Harold and Maude, Tron Theatre, Glasgow

There's something naively life-affirming about Colin Higgins's love story between well-heeled nihilistic teenager Harold and 79-year-old free-spirit Maude.

Higgins's own stage version of the cult film he scripted for director Hal Ashby was a commercial flop on Broadway, and it's not difficult to see why in Theatre Jezebel's Glasgay! revival. It's not that it's bad, it's just that a black comedy based on a kid who fakes suicide in between hanging around funerals probably makes more sense now than it did then. The early 1970s were an awkward period in American social history when the summer of love had begun to give way to something darker and more cynical. While Kenny Miller's vivid production taps into the play's period oddity, it also shines a beacon on how disaffected youth can be woken up to life by their elders in a way that might easily be applied to today. Miller allows his cast to breeze through what becomes an off-kilter comic romp with a set of heightened performances to suit.

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