Centaur Theatre /50th Season
TRUE CRIME
January 8 - 27, 2019
This is a one man show, based on a personal experience of the actor and the writer of the play Torquil Campbell. (You can read more about him here). The play’s twisted narrative about an exceptionally successful, true-life con man was additionally co-created with Crow’s Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham, and with Julian Brown.
This is a one man show, based on a personal experience of the actor and the writer of the play Torquil Campbell. (You can read more about him here). The play’s twisted narrative about an exceptionally successful, true-life con man was additionally co-created with Crow’s Theatre Artistic Director Chris Abraham, and with Julian Brown.
In his youth, Torquil Campbell was obsessed with true crime reality
TV shows. Thanks to his good memory, when in
2009 he read about Clark Rockefeller having been arrested for
kidnapping his own daughter, he recognized him as Christopher
Chichester from an old episode of Unsolved Mysteries, where he was
wanted in connection with the disappearance of two people. This
imposter was born in Germany California State
To explain his preoccupation with the criminal,
Torquil admits:
"When I saw the pictures of him [Rockefeller] I immediately noticed that we bore a resemblance to each other and I started to realize that a lot of what he had been trying to do for a long time was impersonate someone quite a lot like myself — he was trying to be an effete East Coast preppy WASP! We look alike, we wear the same kind of glasses, we have the same tastes in things … the similarities started to get eerie. And that got me wondering, ‘What would it be like if I tried to become this guy?"
Torquil Campbell plays both characters, himself
and the imposter, with a lot of expressive energy, gesticulation, and a rapid
change of facial expressions and body language. The differentiation of the two
personas is also additionally achieved by the changing of the lights
configuration behind the actor. This is a cleaver and quite effective device
that also adds to the play’s décor. Yet if you have sensitive eyes, I would
advise you to sit away from the stage, to add additional distance to this back
stage character lightening signalisation. I was sitting in the second raw and
had to look away from the stage during most of the play, as the lights were
really bothering my eyes.
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For more information, visit the Centaur Theatre website.
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