Bill Milner (Dunkirk, X-Men: First Class, Son of Rambow) is to star with the previously announced, Olivier Award-winning West End star Sheila Hancock, in the London premiere of the black comedy romantic drama Harold and Maude at the Charing Cross Theatre.
Harold and Maude by Colin Higgins reunites Sheila with director Thom Southerland after their acclaimed sold-out success with the UK premiere of the musical Grey Gardens in 2016. It will premiere at Charing Cross Theatre, Thom Southerland, Artistic Director, Steven M. Levy, Managing Director, from Monday 19 February and run for a strictly limited run of 6 weeks to Saturday 31 March.
Bill recently appeared in Christopher Nolan’s acclaimed WW2 film Dunkirk and played the role of young Erik Lensherr/Magneto (Ian McKellen’s character) in the superhero film X-Men: First Class. He made his acting debut in 2007 in the film Son of Rambow. He also starred alongside Michael Caine in Is Anybody There? and portrayed Ian Dury’s son Baxter in the biopic Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll. He has the title role of iBoy, a teenager who suffers severe head injuries after a previous incident, and develops cybernatural powers, alongside Game of Thrones star Maisie Williams in the Netflix oiriginal film, IBoy.
Harold and Maude is an idiosyncratic romantic fable told though the eyes of the most unlikely pairing: a compulsive, self-destructive young man and a devil-may-care, septuagenarian bohemian. Dame Marjorie “Maude” Chardin (Sheila Hancock), is a free spirit who wears her hair in braids, believes in living each day to its fullest, and “trying something new every day”. Harold Parker Chasen (Bill Milner) is an 18-year-old man who is obsessed with death, attends funerals of strangers for entertainment and stages elaborate fake suicides. Through meeting Maude at a funeral, he discovers joy in living for the first time. Part 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.
The cast also includes Anthony Cable (The Woman in White, Death Takes a Holiday, Charing Cross Theatre), Rebecca Caine (Flowers For Mrs Harris,Crucible Sheffield, Christine, The Phantom Of The Opera, Cosette in the original cast of Les Miserables), Christopher Dickins (Ragtime, Charing Cross Theatre, War Horse, National Theatre), Joanna Hickman (Off West End Award Best Supporting Actress nominee for Ragtime, Charing Cross Theatre), Samuel Townsend (84 Charing Cross Road, Cambridge Arts Theatre), Anne White (Love in the Past Participle, The Other Palace), Johnson Willis (Dido Queen of Carthage, Salome, RSC).
Creative team: Director Thom Southerland, Designer Francis O’Connor, Costume Designer Jonathan Lipman, Lighting Designer Matt Clutterham, Sound Designer Andrew Johnson, Composer Michael Bruce, Casting Stephen Crockett for David Grindrod Associates.
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