Theatre review: Harry Clarke

Here's me trying to stop filling my theatre reviews with Traitors references even I won't understand in a few years' time, and then someone puts a show on about a convincing liar called Harry Clark(e).

Transferring from New York, David Cale's Harry Clarke is an elusive - but not in an interesting enough way - monologue in which Billy Crudup plays 19 characters. Although for the most part he concentrates on two: Stewie from Family Guy and Spike from Buffy (in the last two seasons after Tony Head left, and James Marsters didn't even have anyone to remind him what he was aiming for.) Growing up in Indiana, at the age of eight Philip Brugglestein started speaking in a parody of a posh English accent, and despite the bullying - mainly from his father - that became his actual voice into adulthood. Moving to New York after his parents' death but not really knowing what to do once there, he spends an afternoon stalking a handsome man. When by chance he actually meets the man some months later, he panics and slips into another alternate persona, of Harry Clarke, who speaks like Damon Albarn having a stroke.

Harry charms Mark, and gradually ingratiates himself with him and his conspicuously wealthy family – eventually seducing Mark, his sister and his mother. At this point I would normally elaborate slightly more on the plot but then I realised that unless I literally write down how it ends, there isn’t really anything to elaborate on.

So this is a weirdly unsatisfying show on a number of fronts, not least of all that Crudup’s performance would actually be a triumph if it wasn’t for the colossal distraction of the English accents. The most charitable way I can look at it is that it’s a satire on the kind of American who just loooooooves a British accent even though they couldn’t spot a real one if their life depended on it, but even if I do actually think plenty of them would be taken in by an (even) camper take on Batman’s butler Alfred ('90s animated version,) or charmed by Ronnie Kray as played by Don Cheadle, I can’t sell myself on it being the intention here. Still, the timing of Crudup’s jumping between characters helps make for a lot of funny moments.

But then the emphasis on comedy is a whole other issue, and Leigh Silverman’s production can’t disguise how little Cale’s play has to say, or how superficially it says it. The blurb promises flashes of Ripley, Saltburn and Jekyll & Hyde, so you’re waiting for a twist that never comes: We know he’s a compulsive liar from the opening lines where he says he can do an impeccable English accent, and there’s no new revelations after that – if there’s anything beyond sheer luck, coincidence and a bit of charm to how his friendship with Mark pans out we’re given no hint of it.

Philip’s been damaged by his childhood and is socially awkward as a result but he’s no Machiavellian supervillain: If Harry’s meant to be the Hyde to his Jekyll we’re given only the vaguest suggestion of this. Philip seems essentially in control of himself (Harry becomes the dominant persona for a couple of months at one point but Philip explicitly chooses to let him do so and can, and does, come back whenever he wants) but not particularly of events around him. Which all seems exactly the opposite of what you want from the kind of stories Harry Clarke compares itself to. Some bad things happen but only in the way that bad things happen in life in general, and I can’t see that Harry not being there would have altered them much. I will grant that the scene describing Mark’s seduction is genuinely sexy, but I was left craving some actual darkness.

Harry Clarke by David Cale is booking until the 11th of May at the Ambassadors Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 25 minutes straight through.

Photo credit: Carol Rosegg.