Comments (0) Best Supporting Actor - 2007
Tie: Ken Clement in Rabbit Hole at the Mosaic Theatre and in The Faith Healer at Inside Out Theatre Mosaic Theatre
Ken Clement is a superb actor who can endow big, overwrought roles with surprising subtlety and grace. He does this constantly, but it's rare to see him in a part that flatly demands that subtlety and grace from the get-go. Recently, he's had two. In The Faith Healer, he played Teddy, the titular healer's long-suffering manager after the two had parted ways. Dispensing showbiz wisdom in a bright cockney accent and struggling to hold himself together when suddenly stumbling into the minefield of his own memories, you felt as though you'd known Teddy forever, and it seemed that Clement never existed at all. In last winter's Rabbit Hole, he played a father reeling from the accidental death of his young son. This time, Clement was wild and mercurially unpredictable, swinging from one emotional extreme to another in a way that seemed entirely organic. When his wife — who, of course, was also a grieving mother — accidentally taped over one of the couple's home movies of their lost son, Clement howled in such a way that it was entirely unclear who was doing the howling, the audience or he. Usually, it was both.
