Harry Clarke - Ambassadors

Apologies for not updating the thread!

I saw the matinee today and loved it. I think it's probably the best one man play I've seen and I was surprised with how good Billy Crudup was (I only really knew him from Almost Famous). Lots of laughs from the audience at the appropriate places. I was worried about the height of the stage but as he was standing for most of it I just got a bit of neck ache.

Saw this tonight and LOVED it.

I agree with the positive reviews above that it's superb storytelling superbly told.

Crudup captivates throughout, and I found the story gripping, though whether it actually amounts to anything is another thing entirely.

Some spoilers follow. . .

In a way, this is a little similar to the Dorian Gray play, with no technology lol.

In both, an actor plays a character without a firm grip on identity, and the actor assumes many different characters and identities through the course of the story, all while you worry that the increasing sense of liberation, that the central character the actor is playing feels, will lead to an almighty crash at some point.

The difference is that the Dorian Gray play has a meta-subtext about technology taking over and erasing our lives, whereas this piece is more surface, less deep.

On the other hand, this piece is much more human and warm, in that all the excitable characters (and they are all delightfully excitable) are played live by a human being, and that human being, Billy Crudup, oozes charismatic daring and possibility constantly and compellingly.

Like others in this thread, I was surprised (and ultimately really pleased) that this is not as dark a piece as I was expecting, given that dark pieces like this have been done to death. And the only dark piece like this I currently want to see stars the world's most flexible, brilliant and unpredictable actor, Andrew Scott (in an adaptation of the high priestess of dark, Patricia Highsmith's "Ripley") on Netflix.

Compared to what I expect that to be like, this is more like a joyous coming out story of one lonely man, like "Heartstopper," though it follows thriller-like tropes as a kind of tease.

Crudup is a joy from start to finish, relishing the excitability of his characters, and while the story itself may not be a comedy, there is some marvellous meta-comedy and genuine humour in all the occasions Crudup is ostensibly playing two characters flirting with each other but is in fact flirting with himself. He is peak funny when playing the coyness of a female character deeply attracted to the macho male character his timid male character is pretending to be. He nails every layer of this complex comic scenario.

So, although the meaning of the story never really amounts to much, the beats of the story are about as fun as a story gets. I had 4 and a half stars of fun.

I thought this was wonderful. Billy Crudup was magnetic and he did a really great job at carving out separate, distinct characters.

I was actually quite taken aback by how dark it was. As much as it is a very funny piece (in large part thanks to Crudup’s performance), the humour always felt like a mask to the darkness bubbling underneath. At times it felt like watching Gollum talking to Smeagol in Lord of the Rings! Brilliant.