Mark H. Dold becomes Harry Clarke and 18 others at GableStage (Photos by Magnus Stark)
By Bill Hirschman
The answer to the question posed by the title character of who is “Harry Clarke?” is to us, of course, who are we individuals in the audience.
Most of us contain different facets of our lives. Some of them our co-workers don’t know about. Some our loved ones don’t know. Some are neatly sorted out in our heads and played out deliberately for different groups like acting roles. Some we may have melded inside so well that we don’t really know ourselves — in every sense of that phrase.
With considerable humor, banked anger and penetrating insight, the powerful 80-minute monologue Harry Clark at GableStage depicts how we choose and craft an identity separate from whatever is our true inner self.
Driven in an epic performance by Mark H. Dold, and molded by director Julianne Boyd, this play instantly intrigues the audience which several minutes later suddenly realizes it has been grabbed in a swirling whirlpool.
David Cale’s script starts with mild-mannered New Yorker Philip Brugglestein telling us his backstory in a gentle English accent, even though he escaped from an abused childhood in Indiana. The 8-year-old boy had invented the persona of Londoner Harry Clarke and adopted the accent before moving to Manhattan.
Philip is something of a dull empty suit loser who slips into the bolder more self-assured Harry in his imagination. One day he impulsively stalks a stranger, Mark. For fun, he strikes up a friendship with the classic urbanite – but in his now amplified personality of Harry. He spins an ever-deepening web of details that would seem impossible to keep up, such as being the business manager for the pop icon Sade. He is also what the script’s publisher calls “sexually precocious.”.
Over time, the increasingly cocky Harry builds a relationship with the well-to-do Mark and his Rhode Island dirty martini family including a lovely sister and his mother. The characterization becomes broader and broader to the point that he refers to a woman as “a bird.” He is almost daring exposure. As Philip digs deeper into the faux Harry and a world he is not really part of, you can feel a resolution coming that may end well or easily may not.
Philip/Harry/Mark Dold ricochet inhabiting 19 characters’ voices, postures and attitudes. But at the risk of giving something away, slowly we hear less narration from Phillip and more from Harry who has virtually taken over Phillip’s life. Our protagonist has been seducing others but Harry is seducing Phillip.
Philip says, “I feel like an imposter,” but clearly he has never seemed and felt more alive. Or on point – who he really is.
While the script is a bit long, the spiraling journey is powered by Boyd and Dold’s fortunately often racing engine. But Cale’s creation of a spiraling descent is hypnotically difficult to predict.
Guided by the staging of Boyd, founding artistic director of the famed Barrington Stage, Mark Dold roams the entire stage, limbs in motion, body spinning, face mobile. His malleable voice – especially the two noticeably different British accents – keeps the ever-twirling characters distinct. Dold is a Carbonell nominee for supporting actor in last season’s Appropriate at GableStage and nominated the season before as one of the brothers in GableStage’s The Lehman Trilogy.
.The set is intentionally sparse – a stage-wide platform backed by a white screen subtly tinted with varying shades, a half-dozen short translucent lighted columns, an Adirondack lounging chair and a side table with a glass of water. The lighting also changes on occasion but its most just bright sunny illumination.
The riveting who-are-we questions echo in the evening for consideration on the drive home. Is the person we project the real us? How much of who we have constructed is the real us? Has that constructed exterior simply freed the real person inside? Who are we?
This is the 27th season opener for GableStage which has thrived under Producing Artistic Director Bari Newport who has kept the company flourishing after the death of the beloved Joseph Adler. The theater has accumulated a record-breaking 1,300-plus subscribers this season.
Harry Clarke runs through Nov. 2 at GableStage, 1200 Anastasia Ave., Coral Gables. Call 305-445-1119 or visit gablestage.org for tickets. Running time 80 minutes no intermission. Tickets range from $60 to $95.
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