Review: HARRY CLARKE, Ambassadors Theatre

Why have so many one-person shows flooded the West End? My inner cynic says it’s cheaper to pay one actor than a whole company. My optimistic side says audiences love to be awe stuck as the performer leaps through imaginative hoops. There’s a lot of that in Harry Clarke thanks to Billy Crudup’s mercurial performance. But a meandering script ensures not much else.

It’s had an odd trajectory. David Cale’s one man play started life off-Broadway in 2017 only to make a short trip onto Broadway and now a much longer journey, seven years later across the Atlantic Ocean, to the West End.

Within ten minutes it’s not difficult to guess why a revival was in order: a slippery tale of a con man manipulating, lying, and seducing his way up the social hierarchy and leaving emotional detritus in his wake. The parallels to the inescapable cultural phenomenon that was Saltburn echo loud.

After a chance meeting, in a theatre no less, with a wealthy but vacuous Matt, introverted loner Philip adopts the persona of uber confident Cockney wheeler-dealer Harry Clarke. A few dirty martinis unravel into yacht parties and New York loft apartments. Philip slithers deeper into Matt’s dysfunctional family but it’s alter ego Clarke in the driving seat without a seatbelt.

Once the seeds are sown it’s obvious what kind of a story will bloom. Inheritance usurping, drug binges and psychosexual seduction. The puzzle pieces fall too predictably into place for it to burrow under the skin. Perhaps American audiences find this sort of thing outrageous, but here it feels flaccid. We’ve seen it before. Criticise it all you want - at least Saltburn threw in a few curveballs.

Cale flirts with interrogating the idea of performance, but never commits enough to garner meaningful answers. Philip is a cinephile; it’s no coincidence that he picks Elstree, famed for its film studios as Harry’s fictional hometown. The performance is drip fed slowly revealing Philip’s sanctuary from childhood trauma at the hands of a homophobic father. The revelation feels like tacky ornamentation rather than an iron-fisted gut punch that the drama needs.

Does Cale know how lucky he is to have Billy Crudup helm the show?  With vocal cords seemingly made of rubber, he slips and bounces from accent to accent. Clarke snarls and barks like the jellied eels hybrid of Johnny Rotten and Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, only to glide back into posh effete Philip, his body snapping, clenching, and easing with tension between each of the fifteen characters. The room is hooked on every breath. Crudup is at total ease. He never cracks a drop of sweat. Without him the show would crumble.

Harry Clarke runs at Ambassadors Theatre until 11 May

Photo Credit: Carol Rosegg