Harry Clarke at The Ambassadors Theatre – Reviews round-up

"Billy Crudup is mesmerisingly magnificent in riotously rude romp"

"Morning Show star Billy Crudup makes his West End stage debut playing 19 characters with devastatingly devilish and delicious ease."

"I belly-laughed and was unexpectedly touched. It's a tonic from so much other self-regarding, navel-gazing worthiness in the theatre in London's West End. "

"Cale’s script soars on catty one-liners and cartoony characters, but rarely achieves true life. Inescapable Jeckyl and Hyde echoes of the far more penetrating Talented Mr Ripley are unfulfilled."

"Billy Crudup is hypnotic in one-man conman tale"

"The writing is quick-witted and mischievous, and in Billy Crudup — best known for his role in TV series The Morning Show — Cale has found an actor who etches a voice for every one of the flock of characters."

"It’s a shaggy dog story, and a thoroughly entertaining one, even if it turns dark towards the end."

"Crudup, who inaugurated the role in 2017, is utterly hypnotic, slipping effortlessly between voices."

"Confessions of a con artist"

"Billy Crudup plays a fantasist with true theatrical élan in his one-man show"

"It’s a five-star performance in a funny and fascinating yet finally flawed show. Billy Crudup, making his West End debut in a piece he performed on Broadway in 2017 — and in an audio version available on Audible — proves a simply stunning storyteller in this tale of identity and deception."

"He’s a one-man fairground ride, a cadaverous Catherine wheel of characters. “I could always do an immaculate English accent,” our protagonist offers as his first line. And although that tremulously, energetically effete accent is not quite like anything actually heard in the British Isles in the past thousand years, it’s all part of the fun."

"Crudup seduces us into buying into these shenanigans with sex and truth and identity just as Philip does. He makes Harry’s lies enjoyably audacious."

"All of these games with truth and identity are nimbly sketched. Yet our antihero lacks a serious opposition to his half-spontaneous, half-schemed assault on the upper echelons of US east coast life."

"Billy Crudup dives into ‘the deep end of sexy’ in tricksy tale"

"Crudup has a constantly compelling presence, his smile often as bright and wide as Alexander Dodge’s opening backdrop of a pastel blue sky streaked with cloud."

"Crucially, the script lacks the motor of a thriller and there is little at stake in this slight story."

" The range of Crudup’s vocal skill is such that you can imagine the peaks and dips of a spirometer graph purely from his performance as Philip."

"If the evening is ultimately a bit of a shaggy dog story, it’s nevertheless rendered with an intoxicating polish to capture the spirit of Sade’s music."

"Billy Crudup dazzles as an imposter with an identity crisis in this slight but sinister monologue"

"This monologue by British-American playwright David Cale, first seen in New York in 2017, essentially puts a full-blown, lifelong identity crisis onstage. Leigh Silverman’s production is smartly paced, with a bravura solo performance from The Morning Show’s Billy Crudup. But the play is effectively a series of Escher staircases leading nowhere, ingenious but inconsequential."

"It’s a technically dazzling and highly entertaining turn, as beguiling as it is unsettling. Yet while Crudup’s energy and charisma carry it, Cale’s play loses its sense of purpose somewhere around one of its many corkscrew twists, and by the time we arrive at its somewhat anticlimactic ending we’re struggling to see the point. Still, it’s a diverting yarn; slight – and slightly sinister."

"Billy Crudup is magnetic in this schlocky one-man thriller"

"There’s the hint of a meta quality to Leigh Silverman’s production: a sense that ‘Harry Clarke’ isn’t just about Philip adopting personae, but about Billy Crudup doing so, or actors generally. The fact Crudup feels like slightly perverse casting for what is, at heart, a queer story kind of works – it’s jarring, dissonant and artificial. You could ask why the hell Philip is doing what he’s doing; but you could equally ask that of Crudup."

"Or maybe that’s reading too much into it and it’s just a frivolous potboiler, lifted by Crudup’s chameleonic charisma and the weirdness of seeing it in England."

"Still, even taking a cynical view of it, it’s trashily entertaining and Crudup is magnetic. Certainly if you’re on a big ‘Saltburn’ comedown this will give you your next creepy little guy hit, no problem."

"Crudup’s consummate, magnetic performance"

"It’s a lot of fun and it touches on rich territory: the nature of identity, the creation of character, the alter egos that society forces us to adopt."

"But there’s a nagging sense that Cale could go further: dig deeper into the psychological issues he raises, explore the jeopardy. The evasiveness may be key to the play, but it also limits it, which feels frustrating and somehow skimpy at a time when identity is such a significant topic, when people casually construct their image via social media, and when AI and identity fraud present serious challenges to authenticity."

"What’s not in doubt is the slippery skill of Cale’s writing and Crudup’s consummate, magnetic performance. Directed by Leigh Silverman, he holds a near-empty stage — just a deckchair and a horizon in Alexander Dodge’s design — zipping between characters, beguiling, charismatic and sinister. If he’s conning us, we’re quite happy to be charmed."

"Billy Crudup is riveting, but this Patricia Highsmith-style thriller fails to sting"

"Where the drama of other great fictional conmen such as Tom Ripley lies in the tension between their amorality and calculating charm, here it manifests in the fractured pathology of a man so damaged by his abusive father he has no coherent self left at all."

"Yet the unstable, performative nature of identity, and its analogous resonance for theatre – the ultimate con trick – are familiar conceits. To be fair, Crudup masterfully embeds them within a truly riveting performance, switching with dizzying precision between simpering young women, hoity-toity boat captains and Upper East Side matriarchs, not to mention his character’s predominant two selves, in what most of all is a triumph of technique."

"Cole’s monologue, though, is boxed in by its central idea: while, with its high-gloss blend of excess, madness and fabulous wealth, it flirts with the trappings of a thriller, there is precious little actually at stake. The audience is always in on the deception, and nor does Brugglestein ever deceive himself. You find yourself waiting for a sting that never comes."

"Billy Crudup's showboating performance elevates a limp play"

"The star of The Morning Show had the audience eating out of his hand with a performance that is better than the material deserves"

"On a set comprising a seascape backdrop and a steamer chair, Crudup is galvanized by an impish internal energy into startling physical and facial transformations."

"Cale’s monologue has been compared to Patricia Highsmith’s Ripley novels but has almost no psychological depth."

"You could read it as a study of the ego versus the id or a social satire, but it’s not that clever. A hint that Harry was always there, acting out Philip’s desires, fizzles out. Some of the narrative twists beggar belief and the 80-minute story ends abruptly. "

"Does it work? Ultimately, no. Crudup gives a beguiling performance and his presence here will delight established admirers. But he’s not a supernova like Sarah Jessica Parker, whose mere appearance live onstage can transcend a limp, lacklustre play."