Harry Clarke review – Billy Crudup paints a picture of fragmented personality in the West End

The latest addition to the West End’s current run of one-person shows stars Billy Crudup, an actor of considerable sophistication and skill best known for The Morning Show.

Written by David Cale, born in Luton but resident in the United States, its inspiration was its first line. “I could always do an immaculate English accent.” In fact, its hero Philip Brugglestein, a timid man from the Midwest, has two English voices: one of the refined, effete aesthete who moves to New York to escape a brutal father; the other the Cockney Harry Clarke, wide-boy and bon vivant, who begins to give him a fantasy life that is bigger, braver and more duplicitous than anything he could ever have dreamed.

The line, of course, is also a hostage to fortune. Despite the presence of numerous voice coaches, both of Crudup’s English impersonations are approximate. But it doesn’t matter. He is too busy painting an entirely convincing picture of a man whose personality fragments into multiple shards in order to live a more interesting life. He is a fraudster whose deceptions spring from unhappiness and as such completely compelling.

In the course of this 80-minute monologue, Crudup not only plays Philip/Harry, but also every character he encounters, endowing each with convincing vocal and physical mannerisms. Under Leigh Silverman’s sensitively relaxed direction, he stands surprisingly still on Alexander Dodge’s set of gleaming deck planks, with only a chair and a table for company.

All the animation comes from his changing voices and gestures that neatly capture each individual as he describes how Harry first stalks, then meets, then seduces Mark, who is rich and a bit lost, and his entire family, including brash mother Ruth with her big hair, and little sister Stephanie, who wants to be a singer and who shifts her weight nervously when she talks to Harry.

It’s very funny indeed. Harry, who is as arrogant and competent as Philip is afraid and inept, decides – out of nowhere – that he used to manage Sade. As the word flies into his brain, Crudup lets it explode with both a pause and a look of shock. A similar expression crosses his face when he catches Mark’s underpants, remarking with surprised triumph on the fact that while Philip couldn’t catch a ball to save his life: “Harry Clarke could somehow nonchalantly raise his arm in the air and catch a pair of flying underwear with effortless grace.”

Cale’s script is fluid and smart, an effortlessly engrossing narrative that retains its wit even as the story darkens. Crudup charismatically mines each twist and turn, landing each line, each thought with immaculate timing. As Harry and his needs take over his persona, and the lies grow bigger and more damaging, he both allows the danger to emerge but never loses sight of the frightened, angry alter-ego beneath.

Towards the close, when things take unexpected turns, and the consequences of his multiple deceptions begin to come home to roost, Crudup holds our sympathy while simultaneously becoming more and more repellent. It’s a real tour de force of storytelling and performance, an old-fashioned pleasure with a modern twist.