INTERVIEW: Understanding ‘Harry Clarke,’ the man of many voices
Photo: Billy Crudup stars in the world premiere of David Cale’s Harry Clarke. Photo courtesy of Carol Rosegg / Provided by BBB with permission.
The journey Harry Clarke has taken is an interesting one for an off-Broadway show. The playwright, David Cale, finished it last summer and sent the one-man show over to the Vineyard Theatre. It quickly attracted the attention of acclaimed director Leigh Silverman and was fast-tracked for a fall 2017 production at the respected off-Broadway theater.
Billy Crudup signed on to play the title character, a midwestern man living a double life as a confident, smart-talking Londoner, in addition to all of the other characters Harry encounters. Audible, which recorded the performance, decided to produce, and now Harry Clarke is continuing it success with an extended engagement at the Minetta Lane Theatre in the West Village. Performances continue through May 13.
For Cale, the past year has been a theatrical adventure.
“I did want to try to see if I could write a solo show that had elements of a thriller, and initially it was written for me originally and for me to perform,” Cale said in a recent phone interview. “I thought it might be interesting if I did a show where I said I wasn’t really English, and I am English. But I had done a whole series of solo shows, and I knew that some people would know me as English writing solo performer. And I thought it might be kind of fun to sort of play with that perception of me, but … that kind of ran out of steam as a concept. I thought it was a little too small, but still, I had sort of written the show in the process. And I don’t know, it was written very intuitively. I didn’t sort of plot it all out or anything. One scene sort of led to another with a story, and before I knew it … it became what it was.”
The thriller aspects come from the central conceit of the show: that Harry Clarke tries to infiltrate an unknowing wealthy family and see how far he can go to win their favor. Along the way, he seduces the members of the family and constantly wonders if there is any stopping his double identity. Think Teorema meets The Usual Suspects.
Throughout the rehearsal period, the script changed quite a bit.
“In the original script, there was a lot of ‘He said this…’ ‘She said that…’ before [Crudup] would do their voices,” Cale said. “It has to be clear who is speaking, and what happened during the rehearsal process and also into the initial run at the Vineyard was that many of these He said/she said’s just fell away because it was so clear who was speaking. You didn’t need to be told, so it became in a way more virtuosic as a performance piece.”
Cale is one of the top solo performers in American theater. He’s the man behind such shows as A Likely Story, Somebody Else’s House, Smooch Music, The Nature of Things and The Redthroats. He has also graced the Broadway stage and appeared in several films.
“I wasn’t really that clear on what I had until Billy entered the picture, and I was hearing it come out of his mouth,” the playwright said. “He’s an extremely smart guy, and he has a lot of questions about things. And I’m very intuitive, and I don’t really think things through consciously. I didn’t quite realize that all of that was in there until Billy brought it to life and started asking questions that made me have to think about it consciously what I had written.”
To further explore the Harry Clarke character, Cale was present during most of the rehearsals, except for a one-week gap when he needed to work on a musical he has in development in Chicago. He appreciated his time watching Silverman work with Crudup, and sometimes he offered revisions to fine-tune the character.
“The show at the Vineyard came together very, very quickly,” he said. “It was the fastest a show has ever gone into production at the Vineyard, in that I sent the script to the Vineyard in late July, and I think it was in production by late August or September. … I’m working on another show with Leigh Silverman, so she was asked immediately. She made herself available through finagling her schedule, but I had other things set up with this musical that I had to leave town to work on the musical for a week in Chicago as soon as we started Harry’s rehearsals. But aside from that, I was around pretty much all the time.”
In the past year, Cale has seen Crudup perform as Harry Clarke more than 60 times. Throughout their collaboration, he was conscious of the fact that he needed to hand over the play to Silverman and Crudup for their unique interpretations.
“I was pretty hands on, but not interfering at all with the directing of it,” he said. “That was totally Leigh Silverman. I answered questions. I was present more than anything. I did rewriting. I rewrote. I added some things between the Vineyard run and the Minetta Lane run, but I was basically quietly in the room, occasionally tweaking the script. I wanted it to fit Billy. I really wanted it to be a handmade suit on him, so if he needed it taken in here a little bit or there, or sometimes hearing him speak the words you realize he didn’t need the next few sentences. He kind of got it because he was inferring it. … You didn’t need to describe what he meant. You need to say less basically.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Harry Clarke runs through May 13 at the Minetta Lane Theatre in the West Village of Manhattan. Click here for more information and tickets.
