Harry Clarke
Tickets from $79 Buy Tickets
Cititour.com Review
Questions of identity and self-identity abound throughout “Harry Clarke,” David Cale’s absorbing drama now at the Vineyard Theater. Cale’s script, which seems to owe a bit of debt to both Patricia Highsmith and Alfred Hitchcock, is quite good, but the lion’s share of praise here belongs to Tony Award winner Billy Crudup, who delivers -- under Leigh Silverman’s simple yet smart direction – the kind of tour-de-force solo performance that deserves to be remembered, even honored, when awards season rolls around next spring.
Harry, by the name, is the alter ego of one Philip Brugglestein, a shy Midwestern gay man who moves to New York City from Indiana at age 18 -- immediately after his father’s death -- to start his life anew. Always fascinated with an English accent (one of the many things his father despised about him), Philip uses it constantly from the day he arrives in New York, which occasionally adds a little cachet to his humdrum existence.
Then, one day many years later, he encounters Mark, a man he’s seen once some months earlier, and he spontaneously introduces himself as Harry Clarke, a Cockney character he invented during his unhappy childhood. Immediately, without warning, a new adventure is born, one with numerous twists and turns -- none of which would ever happen to Philip.
Indeed, Philip is completely transformed by “becoming” Harry: he’s suddenly sexy (and a tad sex-obsessed), ultra-confident, even sometimes outrageous, spinning lies out of nothing and hatching schemes on his feet. Freed from his birthname, birthplace, birth family, Philip evolves into the person he seemingly always wanted to be – and the person everyone wants to be with.
Using no props or extra makeup, just changes of voice and posture, Crudup not only brilliantly toggles between PhiIip and Harry, but creates an entire world of believable characters – most notably, the seemingly macho, desperately unhappy Mark, his equally troubled sister Stephanie, their mother Ruth, Philip’s own dad, and host of other minor personae. Still, there’s never one second during the show’s 80 minutes when you don’t know which character is talking (to you or another character) and Crudup’s face even seems to change its features at times. (The excellent light design is by Alan C. Edwards.)
As for the actual details of the plot, the less you know the better. As Harry tells Mark when they are watching a play: “Why would you want to know what’s going to happen? Isn’t one of the powers of art rooted in the element of surprise?”
I couldn’t agree more.
By Brian Scott Lipton
Visit the Site
http://www.vineyardtheatre.org/harry-clarke
Cast
Billy Crudup
Open/Close Dates
Opening 10/26/2017
Closing 12/17/2017
Box Office
212-353-0303
Theatre Info
Vineyard Theatre
108 East 15th Street
New York, NY 10003
Map
Comments
Sign up for our newsletter !