FEATURE PROFILE
“...an actor of intense focus, sublime comic timing and vast range...”
Lily Janiak, San Francisco Chronicle
REVIEWS
“Kevin Clarke, as Agamemnon, is swaggering and fey—like a blend of David Bowie and Jack Nicholson.”
Kerry Reid, Backstage West, on MESSENGER #1
BLACK RIDER
“Kevin Clarke as Old Uncle practically steals the show with a solo turn in which he tells a story involving Ernest Hemingway, his agent, a gun dealer, vultures, Burroughs himself, and the evils of Hollywood.”
Chad Jones, TheaterMania
“A charming but sinister Old Uncle (Kevin Clarke) wanders about as events unfold, offering sound advice...is diabolical.... Even his hair is demonic. Eccentrically attractive yet creepy, he slinks into our minds to stay. If only anyone would heed his words…
Kim Waldron, Theatrius
“Kevin Clarke plays myriad characters, showing versatility, but shines with his opening and closing as the ringleader of the Freak Show.”
Jeffrey R. Smith, For All Events
“It’s as if they went out and bought costumes for types ... and then looked around for anyone with enough crazy verve and talent to bring those clothes to life...Kevin Clarke, you’re the best hair actor in the Bay Area, get your scissors ready!”
John Wilkins, KQED Arts
“...and quintessential Jackson collaborator Kevin Clarke ... as Old Uncle, a roguish carnival barker with a tight grip on his trusty megaphone, round out the able cast.”
Nicole Gluckstern, East Bay Express
GRAND CONCOURSE
“Frog, a twitchy but charismatic old hippie regular customer who likes to charm his way into the kitchen with rambling stories about past travels and drug trips or with non sequitur jokes. As played by Kevin Clarke, Frog is such an enchantingly oddball character that you can see why he gets away with breaking the rules all the time.”
Sam Hurwitt, Mercury News
“Also on scene is the white haired and furiously bearded Frog (a genial, fragile Kevin Clarke), who pops into the kitchen to score a few carrots and get some good words”
Barry David Horwitz, Theatrius
“Then there’s the comical Frog (Kevin Clarke, another terrific Shotgun regular); he appears to be a crazy old hippie who keeps wandering into the kitchen area. Frog, it turns out, isn’t just a comical character — he’s a real person, with real mental problems.”
Jean Schiffman, Examiner
“...Frog (Kevin Clarke), a fascinating homeless man who is suffering from schizophrenia and will sell you a joke for a quarter.... Kevin Clarke also steals the show every time he is on stage. His precise inconsequential thoughts on mankind's role as marauders are magnificent.”
Richard Connema, Talkin Broadway
“There are the small forgivenesses of her daily grind as a nun working in a soup kitchen — the petty theft (mostly just carrots that haven’t made it into the soup pot yet) and ingratitude bordering on entitlement of the people she serves, like Frog (Kevin Clarke, one of the Bay Area’s finest conjurers of eccentricity).”
Lily Janiak, SF Chronicle
“...compared to the genuinely disturbed behavior of Frog (Kevin Clarke), one of the soup kitchen's mentally-challenged regulars who is battling a variety of imaginary demons... Veteran Kevin Clarke scores strongly as the volatile Frog.”
George Heymont, My Cultural Landscape
“Frog (terrific portrayal by Kevin Clarke), who suffers from alcoholism, paranoia and has a strange sense of humor. Frog, as well as Oscar, provide well-needed comic relief, with Frog’s condition being sensitively handled.”
Emily S. Mendel, Berkeleyside
“Enter ... Frog, one of the regulars and a brilliant, funny, and insightful man on the edge of mental illness. Kevin Clarke portrays Frog with a charming sensitivity, offering a full-rounded treatment of this very vulnerable and likeable character.”
Kristin Cato, The Blinking Eye
THE VILLAGE BIKE
“The real play for fun comes when local actor Oliver shows up in costume (tight pants, knee boots, and a flair of overt sexiness) to deliver the bike.... Daring desire is written all over Kevin Clarke’s steady stare of seduction from eyes that scream for a hot affair. He pushes the initially timid Becky without forcing and later becomes the starring partner of her fulfilled fantasies with full gusto and grit.”
Eddie Reynolds, Theatre Eddys
“Oliver (Clarke) is vigorous, upbeat, robust, sexually adventurous and seemingly tireless: That he is also married hardly matters.”
Leo Stutzin, Huffington Post
“As Oliver, Kevin Clarke is a charming, frightening, and masterful compartmentalizer.”
Mark Rudio, A Beast In A Jungle
“the local Lothario, Oliver (a comically sensual Kevin Clarke) ... embodies all that her porn promises and more. Pretty soon they are schoolgirl and schoolmaster on his living room couch and its onward and downward from there… Kevin Clarke ups the comic conflict and the ante, when he proves to be an equally randy player and fantasist for Becky. Their couplings and dress-up may be porn-centric, but they sure do heat up her erotic life in that tiny village.”
Barry David Horwitz, Theatrestorm
“Clarke is one of my favorite local actors, and he’s perfectly cast here as the rakish Oliver.”
Sue Trowbridge, The Conical Glass
“...every encounter with a man, from the schlubby local plumber ... to the aggressively eccentric man who sells her a bicycle (a devilishly louche Kevin Clarke) becomes laced with excruciatingly awkward sexual tension.”
Sam Hurwitt, Mercury News
“The actors abandon themselves to pure feeling, no matter how ugly. After the first hour, I gave into their crazy energy, and by the second, they had me floating alongside Skinner’s wild rhythms and U-turns. You feel not only that the play matters to this talented actress [Stebbins], but also that it’s changing her as she performs it. Though the same could be said of the whole cast, especially Clarke, Sinaiko, and Medina.”
John Wilkins, KQED Arts
“Kevin Clarke is outstanding as the actor Oliver. He skillfully portrays the character as cold-hearted with an arrogant swagger, and the lover who fills the gap in Becky's life.”
Richard Connema, Talkin' Broadway
“As Oliver, Kevin Clarke projects the snarl of a natural cad.”
Jeffrey Edalatpour, SF Weekly
HAMLET
“Kevin Clarke makes for a passionate and precise Hamlet. It’s a thrilling performance. And the next night, he brings those same qualities to Laertes and it unleashes a crazy energy into the production.”
John Wilkins, KQED Arts
“Clarke is an exquisite physical actor; as the April 13 Gertrude, he conveyed worlds of emotion in each sidelong glance.”
Claudia Bauer, SF Chronicle
“Clarke got his third shot at Hamlet last night, and it came off as a studied, fully realized, and energetic performance with considered nuance given to some of the most famous lines — and, after all, "the play's the thing" takes on all new meaning in a meta production like this.”
Jay Barman, SFist
“I also saw company member Kevin Clarke play Ophelia – a sensitive and beautiful performance despite the fact that he made almost no attempt to impersonate a young woman. The dynamics of the tragedy emerge from the circumstances, not from the actors’ appearances and personalities.”
Kurt Daw, Shakespeare's Tribe
“Kevin Clarke was a Ghost that stunned Hamlet and Horatio and audience alike with his sudden appearances and his piercing intensity of message. As Gravedigger, his interactions with Hamlet were like a comic duo and produced the desired levity preceding the next upcoming scenes of blood and death.”
Eddie Reynolds, Theatre Eddys
ADA AND THE MEMORY ENGINE
“The actors made the story pretty irresistible. There’s an electric undercurrent of eroticism in [Zdan's] chatter about prime numbers and algorithms with Kevin Clarke’s ever-more-enchanted Babbage at their first meeting.”
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
“after Ada meets Babbage (Kevin Clarke), a polymath whose attention is easily distracted by his next brilliant idea, she finds herself falling in love with a man whom she can bond with on an intellectual level but who remains emotionally unavailable. Ada and the Memory Engine is a rare and special artistic achievement: an intelligent play about intelligent historical people that has been crafted by intelligent theatre artists for an intelligent audience.”
George Heymont, Huffington Post
“The cast does an equally terrific job. Kathryn Zdan enlivens Ada with all the necessary passion and vivacity, and Kevin Clarke plays an intelligent but stubborn Babbage, who will undermine all his good work through his public and political animosities.”
Jaime Roblesk, Repeat Performances
“Charles Babbage (played with disheveled brio by Kevin Clarke), creator of the Analytical Engine... Zdan and Clarke make a marvelous pair of zealots, and when they describe a machine bigger than a ballroom clacking and banging, solving problems and making music, their enthusiasm is infectious. Their love for one another, which the play suggests was romantic yet unconsummated, is also well played, and serves as the through-line of the plot.”
Elizabeth Costello, SF Weekly
“she becomes soul mates with a famous inventor, Charles Babbage (an intriguing Kevin Clarke). Clarke’s depiction of the bumbling, self-defeating Babbage makes a congenial comic pairing with the innocent and oppressed Ada.”
Barry David Horwitz, TheatreStorm
“Charles [Babbage] was big on ideas but not a man of action. Kevin Clarke portrays the complicated Babbage with finesse.”
Tanya Grove, For Words
ANTIGONICK
“Clarke, as a conflicted Kreon, is especially compelling, and his final scene is one that lingers in memory.”
Chad Jones, Theatredogs
“Kevin Clarke is excellent as the militant Kreon who pompously announces his verbs for today (adjudicate/legislate/scandalize/ capitalize.”
Richard Connema, For All Events
“Kevin Clarke's Kreon closed the evening with an increasingly desperate attempt to physically climb the set's curved rear wall.”
George Heymont, My Cultural Landscape
“Kevin Clarke’s Kreon is anxious and unsteady, reciting his lists of words for today as if giving himself a pep talk: “Here are Kreon’s nouns: reason, treason, death, ship of state, mine.”
Sam Hurwitt
“the militant Kreon (Kevin Clarke), who bombastically announces his “verbs for today” and his nouns while wielding the backs and flats of his hands like blades.”
Irene Hsiao, SF Weekly
“...In spite of her uncle Kreon's (an intense Kevin Clarke) forbidding.”
Karen D'Souza Mercury News
THE NEW ELECTRIC BALLROOM
"The further we get into "Ballroom," the more rewardingly the focus shifts to them, culminating in their own alternative rock-concert courtship, Clarke's brilliantly serpentine monologue and Wilmurt's expressive reactions to the twists of his narrative."
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
"Village loner and oddball Patsy (Kevin Clarke), meanwhile, forever proffering a tray of the day's catch to this hostile household of shut-ins, is literally fishing for compliments, the poor bastard. In his rubber boots and rough clothes he presents himself with decorous care and insistent charm, like a seriously underappreciated only child."
Robert Avila, SFBG
"The gossipy and lonely local fishmonger, Patsy (played with comical, and affecting, intensity by Kevin Clarke), appears regularly with trays of fish."
Jean Schiffman The Examiner
"Everyone knows everyone’s business, and a fourth character, Patsy, who delivers fish, slams in the front door now and then to compulsively blurt the town’s latest gossip. He’s another lost soul—in a paranoid moment he claims the village is closing in on him—longing for some warmth of welcome from the sisters, though they repeatedly reject his forlorn advances. ...and Kevin Clarke as Patsy, whose monologues are highlights of the play."
Robert Hall, Repeat Performances
"Her one chance at escape might involve a piteous fishmonger named Patsy (a potent turn by Kevin Clarke)"
Karen D'Souza SJ Mercury News
"Soon he is transformed into Roller Doyle [sic], a rocker from her nearly hallucinogenic memory who seductively grinds his hips like a reincarnation of Elvis Presley as he performs atop the sisters' dining room table."
George Heymont, Huffington Post
SHE RODE HORSES LIKE THE STOCK EXCHANGE
“Clarke has all kinds of edgy charisma as Max plays on the swings — the mood swings, naturally, it’s a park — and takes stock of his life and all the things about it he hasn’t paid attention to since he was a child.”
Chad Jones, Theatredogs
“Kevin Clarke gives a charismatic performance as a marginal neurotic who can’t believe his fate.”
Richard Connema, For All Events
“I was particularly impressed by the physical comedy of Kevin Clarke’s Max.”
George Heymont, My Cultural Landscape
“...and bank-owning breadwinner Max (an equally dynamic Kevin Clarke, outwardly suave yet reveling in Ubu-esque paroxysms of infantile yearning).”
Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian
“Amy and Max (a buttoned-down, entitled and borderline shell-shocked Kevin Clarke) — each intriguingly uneasy in her or his own skin — have a fraught history as colleagues and rivals.”
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
WOYZECK
“Kevin Clarke nearly steals the show as a buffoonish doctor.”
George Heymont, Huffington Post
“…and the Doctor (a maniacally cheerful deviant in Clarke’s finely sculpted performance)”
Robert Avila, San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Kevin Clarke is delightfully bizarro. He has the menacing manner of a mad scientist, with a shock of Albert Einstein hair. Clarke’s edgy unpredictability makes the doctor both menacing and hysterical.”
Erika Milvy, KQED Arts
“Kevin Clarke is an entertainingly daffy mad scientist as the doctor, quizzing Woyzeck about his diet and raving about how he could—dare I say it?—rule the world with his medical experiments, barking the magnificently bouncy “God’s Away on Business” at our hero through a megaphone.”
Sam Hurwitt, theidiolect.com
“Woyzeck...picks up a few extra pennies as the subject of medical experiments for a ruthless doctor (an intense Kevin Clarke).”
Karen D'Souza, SJ Mercury News
“[Joe] Estlack stops the show ... as does Kevin Clarke’s wild-eyed Doctor, warbling "bacteria" on "God's Away on Business.”
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
“Kevin Clarke gives a comically intense performance as the
eccentric tweedledum-tweedledee doctor with a fantastic skew-whiff head of hair.”
Richard Connema, Talkin' Broadway
“...that memory is trumped by Kevin Clarke’s unsettling, urgent whispers of ‘bacteeeria’. In his role as the sadistic army doctor who subjects Woyzeck to medical experiments, Clarke shines.”
fedorasandfeathers.com
SALOMANIA
“...the cast member who continually held my attention was Kevin Clarke (who doubled as Judge Darling and the ghost of Oscar Wilde).”
George Heymont, Huffington Post
“Clarke makes a huge leap of character in transformation from the stern judge who presides over the libel case to the weary ghost of Wilde, presumably in his depressed and alcoholic final years."
Leo Stutzkin, Huffington Post
“Clarke does a masterful double turn as Wilde and Judge Darling.”
Georgia Rowe, SF Examiner
“Kevin Clarke is darling as Justice Darling, the delightfully high-spirited judge hearing the trial…He also makes a melancholy but still poised and terribly witty Oscar Wilde, long past the end of his rope.”
Sam Hurwitt, theidiolect.com
“[Clarke’s] performance as Oscar Wilde in the last scene is exquisite.”
Richard Connema, Talkin' Broadway
“Particular mention should go to Kevin Clarke whose channeling of Life of Brian-era Michael Palin was a much needed light point and whose pathos-driven, late-era Wilde was a well-balanced focal point for the audience’s sympathies.”
Thoman Coughlan, Daily Californian
“...towards the play’s end, I couldn’t get enough of Kevin Clarke as an aged Oscar Wilde in conversation with the defeated Maud Allen."
Geneva Anderson, ART Hound
“The courtroom scenes are the most effective and the most humorous because Judge Darling is not in control of his courtroom. Ensemble member Kevin Clarke plays this part as an inept victim. He also plays Oscar Wilde with smooth aplomb.”
Albert Goodywn, For All Events
“Kevin Clarke inarguably nails the hypocrisy of the times as the florid-faced, effeminate Judge Darling, but then has some mesmerizing moments as a frail, aging Oscar Wilde.”
Stacy Trevenon, stageandcinema.com
“...even Oscar Wilde himself (an achingly affecting Kevin Clarke), in his broken but still prolix post-sodomy trial, post-labor camp days.”
Lily Janiak, SF Weekly
“I’m going to be contrarian and vote for “Salomania,” which had two of the most potent scenes of the year: a mesmerizing dialogue between a war widow and a soldier...and Kevin Clarke’s poignant turn as an aged Oscar Wilde.”
Best of 2012: Theater, The Conical Glass
“Kevin Clarke steals more than one scene with his fey depiction of a Judge in the Old Bailey.”
Kedar Adour, Theatre World Internet Magazine
“I was moved by the beauty in which Kevin Clarke transitions from Judge Darling to Soldier to Oscar Wilde in a span of two minutes. Each change seemed to have its own ‘quirks’ but it wasn’t until he became Wilde that the biggest one hit...He slowly combed his hair back...he reached out his hand to the chair he was once sitting on. It was trembling...As he slowly lifted the seat of the chair and took out a white jacket, Clarke began to hunch over slightly and with shaking hands placed his hat on with an artistic tilt. Next, he slowly made his way to the table upon which sat a lone wine glass and bottle. His shuffling feet were the only noise as the audience sat spellbound.”
theactorvist.com
“Clarke milks all his lines for prurience and comic effect.”
Rachel Swan, East Bay Express
“Kevin Clarke plays five [roles], including a riveting Oscar Wilde and the sassy and sarcastic Judge Darling in addition to a soldier.”
Alex Bigman, The San Francisco Appeal
“Kevin Clarke was a particular standout, bouncing back and forth deftly among three (or was it four?) different roles and making them all distinctive and engaging. (He did a similar task in God’s Plot a while back, and with similar panache.)”
David Scott Marley, Scratchings.net
GOD'S PLOT
“...of the pietistic judge (a blustering Kevin Clarke) and his judgmental wife (Fontana Butterfield)—whose prayer-foreplay is a hilarious showstopper.”
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
“Kevin Clarke is quite funny in flashbacks as Thomas’s bawdy father and pleasingly repressed as Tryal’s father, the local judge.”
Sam Hurwitt, theidiolect.com
LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS
“Kevin Clarke simply steals every scene he’s in as the S&M dentist with a lethal penchant for nitrous oxide.”
Robert Sokol, SF Examiner
“Clarke as the twisted Dentist Orin gave a singularly brilliant performance.”
Jay Irwin, Broadway World
“Everyone’s favorite badass dentist is played to sadistic perfection by Kevin Clarke, who rolls up Natoma Street on an actual motorcycle.”
San Francisco Bay Guardian
BEARDO
“Kevin Clarke as the milquetoast Tsar infuses his role with effortless comedy.”
John A. McMullen II, Berkeley Daily Planet
“Kevin Clarke is marvelously funny as the timid and apologetic Tsar.”
Sam Hurwitt, theidiolect.com
“Beardo soon has [Kevin Clarke’s dithering] Tsar under his spell too, in Clarke and Davaran's cute rollover/sit up/beg routine.”
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
“Clarke’s Tsar is lovably ineffectual.”
Chris Jensen, SF Weekly
MACBETH
“Some lesser roles are well-delivered by...Kevin Clarke who opens the play as a most disturbing bloody sergeant and penetrates his later scenes as Macbeth’s right-hand murdering man.”
Denise Battista, playshakespeare.com
"Most of the victims are dispatched by a single murderer, played by Kevin Clarke as a remorseless, psychopathic killing machine. The murder of Banquo was graphic enough to make the audience groan.”
Axel Feldman, notforfunonly.com
“Even the murder scenes possess a Tarantino-esque sense of fun. Instead of fleeing after Banquo's murder, Kevin Clarke's sinister Seyton spends several minutes punctiliously dabbing up bloodspots with a handkerchief. The assassin's hyperactive housekeeping habit isn't merely grimly funny; it serves as a mocking precursor to Lady Macbeth's "Out, damned spot!" speech.”
Chloe Veltman, SF Weekly
THE FOREST WAR
"Intrigues and longings are expressed in a very physically stylized and specific fashion. Which makes this Kevin Clarke's show. As the villainous Kain, he has not only tremendous physical control, but he and Jackson have the shorthand that develops between longtime collaborators. He also seems to be the most at ease with the language... Kain is a far cry from the frenetic Shostakovich Clarke played in Shotgun's The Death of Meyerhold, but every bit as intense.”
Lisa Drostova, East Bay Express
"Lord Kain (a ferociously edgy, impatient Kevin Clarke), is eager to complete the job of destroying the enemy his father only defeated."
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle
"Jackson directs his actors beautifully, extracting performances from Brown, Tasker, Hewitt, and Clarke, in particular, that breathe individually and expansively inside the productively strict choreography and caricature demanded.”
Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian
PASTIME
“Clarke gives a stupendous performance to make passers-by stop and stare, so that when he's borne casket-like by his teammates to the strains of ‘America’ (‘My Country, 'Tis of Thee’), you wonder if this is just a game after all.”
Rachel Howard, SF Chronicle
BENT
“In a standout performance, Kevin Clarke delivers a pitch-perfect portrait of Horst, an older, openly gay man who, despite his most appalling and inhumane treatment, hangs onto his shredded pride, diginity and sense of humor. Clarke's slow, silent shuffle through a food line reveals more about Horst's history in the camp than any words put to paper.”
Christine Murray, KQED Arts
“Kevin Clarke gets the full potential of his demanding role of Horst in the second act. Both [actors] give mesmerizing performances as they carry the rocks back and forth across the barren stage.”
Richard Connema, Talkin' Broadway
“Grounded by Kevin Clarke's heartfelt portrayal of a prisoner dignifying his pink badge, the rock-bottom end leaves audiences in the midst of an unequivocal horror that somehow still allows space for intimate love and self-acceptance.”
Nathaniel Eaton, SF Weekly
“As the unequivocally gay Horst, Kevin Clarke connects with the character's sardonic humor and vulnerable emotions. As they carry actual heavy rocks across the stage for most of the act, Hodges and Clarke convince us of their growing bond.”
Richard Dodds, Bay Area Reporter
TRAVESTIES
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“Clarke imbues Tzara with a Chaplinesque charm, and his unhinged tantrums have a revealing poignancy to them (Dada's irrationalism and nihilism seeming more than reasonable under the circumstances).”
Robert Avila, SF Bay Guardian
THE DEATH OF MEYERHOLD
“...the composer Shostakovich has a panic attack in Meyerhold's flat. Crawling on both horizontal and vertical surfaces like a gecko, Kevin Clarke recalls a photo from Meyerhold's production of The Magnanimous Cuckold.”
Lisa Drostova, East Bay Express
“Kevin Clarke is the extremely nervous Shostakovich...It is a wonderful if extreme performance of the man.”
Richard Connema, Talkin' Broadway
“...outstanding work by...Kevin Clarke as a basket-case Shostakovich.”
Robert Hurwitt, SF Chronicle