At GableStage: A Soaring Solo
Harry Clarke is a mesmerizing, one-man masterpiece
By Tina Wyngate / Photos by Magnus Stark
My friend who attended the performance with me stood silent for a moment afterwards. “Genius,” he said. “Pure genius.” I was in equal owe. The one-man performance by Mark H. Dold we had just witnessed was some of the best live theater I’d ever seen. For nearly 90 minutes, Dold held the audience hypnotized by his portrayal of Harry Clarke, the eponymous anti-hero of the same-named play by David Cale.
Harry Clarke is the story of an ordinary man from the Midwest named Philip Brugglestein, with a ne’re-do-well alternate personality (you guessed it, Harry Clarke, hailing from an imaginary London). And what a story it is. The script is a narrative that keeps you guessing, wanting to know where this tale is going next. It is a story of both self-discovery and shameless opportunism, both funny and scathing, simultaneously intriguing and irreverent.
Dold – an award-winning veteran of Broadway, Off-Broadway, TV, and film – does an extraordinary job of keeping the audience engaged. He delivers the wit and wisdom of Cale’s script with bulls-eye precision, able to pull off a range of accents and personalities that seamlessly moves the storytelling along. Like Nabokov’s Humbert Humbert in Lolita, you can’t help but develop an affection for this rascal who is ultimately a manipulator and user of other people.
This play is a ride that you don’t want to get off, delivering a brilliant performance of a superb script. As the launch of the Gablestage’s 27th season – and the fifth season for GableStage producing artistic director Bari Newport – Harry Clarke delivers a performance more than worthy of both and sets the bar almost impossibly high for the caliber of live entertainment in Coral Gables. Kudos also to veteran director Julianne Boyd, who first coached Dold in the Barrington Stage Company’s post-Covid production of Harry Clarke. This is one not to miss.