Musical Love Story Disgustingly Wonderful

Minutes before the Adams Pool Theater doors were scheduled to open for the inaugural performance of the ribald sex farce “Maude and Harold a Musical Love Story ‘on ice’” co-producers and co-writer Patrick D. Swieskowski ’06 issued a stern warning to the house managers: “Don’t let any kids in.” A potboiler warning reading “not suitable for children” appeared prominently on the production’s playbills, but Swieskowski wasn’t taking any chances.

And for good reason: the show’s script—co-written by Swieskowski, Samuel M. Johnson ’06, co-producer Farley T. Katz ’06, Michael C. Mitnick ’06, and Andrei Nechita ’06—was peppered with ear-withering foul language, gratuitous strip teases, glib drug abuse, cringe-inducing 9-11 gags, and blasphemous musical interludes.

Fun for the whole family? Hell no. But, depending on how easily you’re offended, a lot of fun nonetheless.

This musical, directed by Vanessa A. Pope ’07, took its basic premise from Hal Ashby’s 1971 May-December romance movie “Harold and Maude” which chronicles the tortured relationship between a spry octogenarian (Maude) and her moribund twenty-something lover (Harold). In “Maude and Harold,” the genders of the mismatched lovers are reversed: Marianne (Joanna D. Goldstein ’06), a sultry 14-year-old girl, becomes the erotic fixation of a geriatric lecher, Donald (John K. Minervini ’07), after a brief flirtation over the Internet peer-networking program Myspace.

Minervini was hysterically funny as Donald: his arthritic posture and craggily old man voice were delightfully over-the-top. However, during his musical numbers, Minervini dropped the old man act and belted with the clarity and intensity of a Broadway veteran—resulting in a hilariously incongruent performance.

Goldstein was equally impressive as Marianne. The role required her to shift between being a naïve schoolgirl and a jailbaiting temptress, and she did so seamlessly. She even demonstrated formidable hip-hop chops during the musical’s zany rap interludes.

Goldstein’s saccharine sweet voice was oddly matched to the Lil’ Kim worthy lyrics she was required to recite, but “Maude and Harold” was nothing if not a comedy of incongruities.

Mitnick’s exceedingly hummable score swelled beneath the show-stopping musical numbers, but never overwhelmed the actors’ riotous vocal performances. Mitnick’s score alluded extensively to the wholesome showtunes of yesteryear’s Rogers and Hammerstein productions—which was all the more ironic considering the songs’ risqué content.

Pope had her hands full orchestrating frequent set changes. The stage underwent several transformations during the course of the musical: it was made to stand in for everything from a nursing home, to a meth lab, and finally Heaven. The production was a feat of stagecraft.

Though “Maude and Harold” billed itself as an “on ice” production, the show’s producers opted not to convert the Adams Pool into a hockey rink. Instead, the performers wore rollerblades and, with the assistance of Anna E. Pasternak’s ’07 inspired choreography, delivered a reasonable simulacrum of ice dancing.

The performers’ unsteady, and sometimes downright clumsy, skating resulted in several Chaplin-esque pratfalls, but these “mistakes” only added to the musical’s antic energy.

Of the evening’s innumerable gags and spoofs the only joke to fall flat was the ironic moment of silence the cast held for America’s soldiers in Iraq. The joke’s blatant offensiveness inspired uncomfortable laughter initially, but as the moment of silence dragged on past the two minute mark the crowd settled into an unpleasant funk. Luckily, the musical recovered from that blunder and finished with the same manic energy with which it began.

“Maude and Harold” was an affront to decency, a celebration of obscenity, and an assault on the values and institutions that most people consider sacrosanct, and that’s precisely why it was so thoroughly enjoyable. Some plays slaughter sacred cows—“Maude and Harold” turned the stage into a veritable abattoir.

—Reviewer Bernard L. Parham can be reached at parham@fas.harvard.edu.