Matt McGrath: Sinuous and Alone

The actor will become the iconic designer this summer in MISTER HALSTON at the Bay Street Theater.

In the recent MGM+ series “American Classic,” Matt McGrath was the small-town undertaker who had a twinkle in his eyes and a great head of hair that whispered at secrets beneath his exterior. Naturally, in this sweet Capraesque series, it is both the lure and the liberation of small-town theatrics and the pixilated nature of others in the town that bring the actor, the showman, out in this man. It was a beguiling performance in a program full of them, but it made me wish for more from McGrath, whom I first saw as the MC in Cabaret, and he was sinuous and lithe and probably had a familiarity with Anita Berber, the famed performer/seductress of the alluring and licentious German nightclubs of the 1920s. McGrath’s MC would seduce you, certainly, and he was destined for a burnout, but I felt that after his conquests on and off the stage, he might have curled up with a thick book of philosophy. This MC knew things beyond that dingy stage.

Years later I would see McGrath in a production of two Harold Pinter plays for the Atlantic Theater Company, and in “The Collection,” he was again seductive, and his question of “Cheese?” was a provocation and a judgment. It was not just an offer of some dairy. It wasn’t just that McGrath was on to the mysteries of Harold Pinter—he seemed to be on to the mysteries and secrets of his fellow actors and all of us in the audience.

Watching Mr. McGrath’s Kenny Klaus bloom on “American Classic” made me want to see this actor in other things, and I now have my wish: Beginning on June 2, McGrath will command the stage of the Bay Street Theater in Sag Harbor—on his own—in Mister Halston, a play by Raffaele Pacitti that finds the famed designer stripped of his name, identity, and purpose, and his work—once gracing the bodies of Elizabeth Taylor, Liza Minnelli, and Lauren Bacall—now on the racks of J.C. Penney. There are many stories of the man known as Halston. The young Roy from Iowa who dreamed his way into a world of glamour; the great friend who could bring out the best in his friends; the avaricious drug addict who sold his name to keep the accoutrements of his life but lost what was most precious to him. What is the truth of the man? Who was he?

In his final years, Halston was holed up and guarded by a man named Mohammed, smoking and sharing his hopes of redemption with various writers. The townhouse in which he sat spinning his tales and announcing his plans had once been the scene of parties and deals and friendship, but he was now alone, and he is alone in Mister Halston. At this point in his life, Halston seemed to many of his friends to be a blending of equal parts the dreaming Roy and the suave, controlling designer who had ruled the world. (And whose perfumes and colognes are still worn and still evoke all that was great about the 1970s. If only we still had Tab.)

Mister Halston will be directed by Michael Wilson, a director known for seeing what is good in actors and excavating what has been unseen by others. Mister Halston is one of the must-see events of the summer season.