Higgins adapted his own screenplay for the stage and charts the relationship between death-obsessed adolescent boy Harold (Bill Milner) and 79-year-old countess Maude (Sheila Hancock).
Harold lives with his bourgeois mother (Rebecca Caine) and amuses himself by staging fake suicides and attending the funerals of strangers.
When he encounters Maude at one such event, he overcomes his initial misgivings to find himself drawn into her web of mischief and nonconformity.
Maude’s eccentricities extend to stealing cars and liberating a number of animals from the zoo, most notably a noisy seal, and she teaches Harold through a series of encounters to jettison his hang-ups and learn “not to be afraid to be human”.
But her unworldly, mercurial nature conceals her understanding of the realities of life and death.
She knows how it will end but Harold remains blind to the inevitable.
Whatever sexual frisson there was in the film has been diluted which blunts the play’s edge but makes it more comfortable to watch.
Thom Southerland also keeps darkness at bay by ratcheting up the whimsy rather to the detriment of the piece.
Actor musicians hang around the fringes of the set providing klezmer-like musical interjections that interrupt the play’s already wobbly trajectory.
And there were complaints of inaudibility even though every actor has a radio microphone.
It suggests there is something rotten in the state of drama training. Some performances are variable but the central delight is the luminous Hancock, who celebrated her 85th birthday recently.
She plays Maude like a superannuated child, a woman in her twilight years whose late-blossoming innocence has been hard earned.
Milner is appropriately deadpan as Harold and heartbreaking in the concluding scene.
Caine is sharply amusing as his mother and Samuel Townsend almost steals the show as the liberated seal.
Charing Cross Theatre, until March 31.
Tickets: 08444 930 650