Harry Clarke: Critics say The Morning Show's Billy Crudup is 'magnetic' (2024)

Critics have praised The Morning Show star Billy Crudup's performance in one-man show Harry Clarke as "magnetic".

The Emmy-winning actor previously starred in the show in New York before its transfer to London's West End.

Crudup joins a long list of actors who have taken on one-person stage shows recently, including Sarah Snook, Andrew Scott and Jodie Comer.

The Guardian described Crudup as "a constantly compelling presence" in its three-star review of the play.

Crudup, a major figure in the New York theatre circuit, told BBC News the opportunity to bring the show to the West End was "irresistible".

"I wanted the chance to be a part of this community, with work that we had spent quite a bit of time on, so we couldn't turn it down," he said.

Brilliantly, the similarly-named Harry Clark - the British reality star who recently appeared on The Traitors - was among the special guests in the audience at the show's opening night on Wednesday.

But while The Traitors shares the play's central theme of betrayal, the Harry Clarke of the stage goes much further in his attempts to deceive and infiltrate a wealthy family.

Crudup plays 19 characters in the 80-minute performance, taking on the roles of everyone the titular confidence trickster comes into contact with.

Asked why so many actors have recently been attracted to one-person stage shows, Crudup joked: "Because we're idiots! I don't know, man, this is the dumbest idea we've ever had!"

He continued: "The experience of doing solo performance is so intimidating, and there are innumerable times that I have panic attacks on stage and can't remember the lines.

"And the only thing that cures that is muscle memory, so you have to drill it and drill it, and when you do that, it sticks in your head."

Awarding the show three stars, the Telegraph's Claire Allfree said 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," she continued, "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."

Crudup is known for films and TV shows including Almost Famous, Big Fish, Mission: Impossible III, Watchmen, Jackie and The Good Shepherd.

His role as TV network executive Cory Ellison on Apple TV's The Morning Show, which stars Jennifer Aniston and Reese Witherspoon, have earned him an Emmy and Critics Choice Award.

The actor previously appeared in Harry Clarke in the off-Broadway Vineyard theatre in 2017. It was relaunched at the Berkeley Rep in California last year before its move to London.

"We'd been speaking as a fantasy about whether or not our show and its material could have the same kind of effect on a British house as it does on an American house," Crudup explained at Wednesday's press launch.

'Thoroughly entertaining'

Written by David Cale and directed by Leigh Silverman, Harry Clarke follows a midwestern man who moves to New York and adopts the persona of a co*cky Londoner in an attempt to charm an affluent family.

He pretends to be a former tour manager for the singer Sade, and woos the family with tales of the showbiz industry.

But transferring a play in which the New York-born Crudup speaks in a British accent to a London theatre was, he admits, an intimidating proposition.

"It's a nightmare," he laughed. "But mercifully, the story contains a conceit that the audience, once they're in on, feels very satisfied with.

"Which is, this is a person who has never been to England. He is inventing himself as a British person to feel better, which has the effect on a British audience of 'Yes we are better, just by way of speaking'.

"And so many of the characters in the play go 'I love your accent', and that is typically an American response to British arrivals."

He added: "It's intriguing to Americans, we take it for granted the way that we speak is English, and when you hear it spoken with a British accent, you hear the words in a different way, so that person becomes in endowed with a different kind of power. So we wanted to see if that story would translate to a British audience."

Sarah Crompton of WhatsOnStage referred to Crudup's mutating accents in her four-star review, writing: "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."

She added: "Crudup charismatically mines each twist and turn, landing each line, each thought with immaculate timing."

Sexually precocious, Harry is seen having romantic encounters with two members of the family he attempts to infiltrate.

The premise may sound familiar to people who have watched Emerald Fennell's recent film Saltburn, which saw Barry Keoghan play a similar character who befriends a well-off friend at university.

The similarities were noted by Time Out's Andrzej Lukowski in his three-star review. "Certainly if you're on a big Saltburn comedown this will give you your next creepy little guy hit, no problem," he wrote.

"Still, even taking a cynical view of it, it's trashily entertaining and Crudup is magnetic," he added - an adjective used by several critics to describe the actor's performance.

Crudup confirmed he had seen Saltburn, adding that audiences are often attracted to stories where they can live vicariously through a deceptive lead character.

"You go to the theatre in general for a cathartic experience, whether that's a good laugh or a cry," he said. "And some of us need to be shocked from time to time, we need to be thrilled by the potential of somebody living their life in a dangerous way.

"It's like going to the circus, watching the tightrope, you know if they fall there's a net, but even so you don't want to watch. The thrill of a pantomime wire-walk, because all of us feel that in life, and it's nicer to feel it than a pantomime than a reality."

The Guardian's Chris Wiegand awarded the show three stars, writing: "Crucially, the script lacks the motor of a thriller and there is little at stake in this slight story."

But, he said "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".

There was more enthusiasm from Clive Davis of the Times, who gave the show four stars, describing it as a "thoroughly entertaining shaggy dog story".

"The writing is quick-witted and mischievous, and, in Billy Crudup, Cale has found an actor who etches a voice for every one of the flock of characters.

She praised Crudup for "zipping between characters, beguiling, charismatic and sinister," concluding: "If he's conning us, we're quite happy to be charmed."