Divamensch

Richard and I saw *Harry Clarke* at the Vineyard Theatre on 11/25/17. It's a one-man play by David Cale about a Midwesterner named Philip Brugglestein who invents an alter ego, Londoner Harry Clarke. He feels liberated, empowered, and completely at ease in this other persona and uses it as his entree to a complicated set of relationships with a wealthy family. The play was funny and sad, which is a combo that works for me. The actor playing Clarke, and every other character in the play, was the great Billy Crudup. He embodied all of the characters effortlessly, he wasn't cute about it, it just made sense. He should share the credit, of course, with the playwright, who wrote the play in a way that made sense, and director Leigh Silverman.

I don't want to go into too much detail, I don't want to give anything away. I'll just say that within five minutes I was thinking of Debbie Reynolds: Richard and I saw her do her club act at the Cafe Carlyle years ago, and her voice was sort of raspy and underpowered. But then she did an extended impersonation of Barbra Streisand at the end of the show, and her voice sounded FANTASTIC. I thought, "Debbie needs to bring some of her Barbra to Debbie!" Brugglestein was like that - - his life was more authentic and had more zest when he was Harry Clarke.