TRUE CRIME
Near-obsession with famous con man led to Torquil Campbell’s one-man theatre show,
Torquil Campbell is a rock ’n’ roll musician, the colourful frontman of the band Stars and an intimate member of the Broken Social Scene family.
Torquil Campbell is a known rabble rouser on Twitter and former radio cultural commentator.
Torquil Campbell is part of a Canadian theatre dynasty, son of the great Douglas Campbell, married to Shaw Festival actor Moya O’Connell and a former professional actor himself since childhood.
So why is his next project making him so nervous?
“With music, I’m always the first person to start playing a new album for friends. But with this I’ve been very reluctant to share it because I do feel scared of this,” Campbell says on the phone from Vancouver, where he lives with O’Connell and their daughter.
But he’s travelling soon to Toronto to premiere True Crime, a one-man show he’s been writing since 2013, which begins previews on Tuesday at Streetcar Crowsnest theatre.
“It has things about me in it. . . You know, I’m hoping the audience leaves thinking I’m potentially not a very good person.”
It’s not a simple case of stage fright that has Campbell jittery about performing True Crime, though that’s definitely a factor. Despite being a professional actor for much of his life, he’s never done a solo show before.
“I’m not a solo guy!” he says — he even shares the role of Stars frontperson with Amy Millan — and stepping back into the role of an actor is resurrecting the insecurities of theatre school in New York City: “My patterns, my eagerness to please, my working too hard . . . all those things that suck about me.”
But the creation of True Crime has brought Campbell to much darker places. It grew out of his personal fascination with real crime stories and a near-obsession with the infamous con man Christian Gerhartsreiter, who masqueraded under the alias Clark Rockefeller from 1995 to 2008, claiming he was a member of the famous family.
After Gerhartsreiter was outed, he kidnapped his own daughter and was later convicted of murdering Jonathan Sohus in 1985 while living under the name Christopher Chichester in San Marino, Calif.
As someone with family ties to the real Rockefeller clan, Campbell felt an immediate connection to Gerhartsreiter.
“I thought this is interesting, this man is trying to pretend to be me in a way. And he sort of looks like me, so what would it be like if I pretended to be him? What if we exchanged places?” Campbell says.
In True Crime, Campbell plays himself, Gerhartsreiter and many other characters as he dives into the artifice that we all have in common with criminals like Clark Rockefeller, like it or not.
“A lot of the play is about why am I so obsessed with this man? Why am I so obsessed with stories like this? After Serial and Making a Murderer, true crime has become a subsection of our culture but, for many years, it was quite frowned upon,” he says. “The answer I’ve come to is that there might be something wrong with me and I might not be entirely healthy, and neither are any of us.”
In a time where, according to Campbell, “we have been beset by sociopathic liars . . . whether they be radio hosts or presidents,” it’s his intention to make audiences examine our own complicity in their success. “Liars only get to lie if there are people around buying their bulls---.”
But the process has proven to be more dangerous than Campbell expected.
“There have been times when it’s been very dirty to me, being involved in his story and being close to someone who lives in that darkness for years and years and years. . . To be honest I find it hard to look at Clark’s face. I know I should be going back and watching the documentaries and reading articles and transcripts, but I find it really difficult to because he’s so deep inside me now I want him out of my life in some way.”
In fact, Campbell almost gave up on the play when he started feeling unsafe writing it. That’s when he met Chris Abraham, artistic director of Crow’s Theatre, who convinced him to go further. Now, Abraham is listed as co-creator along with Campbell and musician Julian Brown, who provides a live soundtrack to Campbell’s performance (as well as a comforting stage partner for Campbell to play off of ).
Abraham “is a man that leads people into danger. That’s what he did for me,” Campbell says.
As he wades into dangerous territory in True Crime, he expects the audience to follow.
“I want the play to entertain and I want the play to excite. And I also want to frighten people,” he says, adding that this show will be influenced by his time as a musician: breaking the fourth wall, inviting audience members to sit closer and D-Jing post-show playlists.
“I want the theatre to be a place where people feel taken care of and welcomed, but I also want it to be a place where they don’t feel passive.
“The person that I play in Stars, whether it’s on social media or onstage, is a disrupter, someone who taunts the powerful and makes fun of those who are on top and tries to f--- with them. And there is a part of my personality that enjoys the idea of people coming in comfort and leaving in consternation,” he says.
“Art is not your mom and art is not your therapist. Art doesn’t have an obligation to be good for you; it has an obligation to be true.” True Crime is at Streetcar Crowsnest, 345 Carlaw Ave., until April 15. Go to crowstheatre.com or call 647-341-7390. Carly Maga is a Toronto Star theatre critic. She alternates the Wednesday Matinée column with critic Karen Fricker.