While a senior in high school, he won the Paper Mill Playhouse Rising Star Award for Outstanding Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role for his performance as Charley in New Milford High School's production of Where's Charley?, which included a scholarship to attend their Summer Musical Theatre Conservatory.

[2] He directed musicals at New Milford High School from 2003 to 2006 (including a show that he wrote, The Bagel Factory) while attending Montclair State University.

[2] McClure's first professional acting role was at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Carousel shortly after graduating high school.

[2] He appeared in the ensemble of the Paper Mill Playhouse revival of the play I'm Not Rappaport, making his Broadway debut when the production transferred to the Booth Theatre in 2002.

[10][11] The Newsday reviewer wrote of his performance: McClure … doesn't just replicate the waddle and pratfalls of Chaplin's little tramp.

He doesn't just do a back somersault without spilling a glass of wine or tap dance on roller skates or walk a tightrope.

He does all that without apparent effort, but he also has a pungent voice that pings and he embodies more than seven decades of Chaplin's life with a focused, altogether believable mix of gravity and light.

wrote, "McClure scampers to and fro with tireless energy, flouncing in and out of his skirts with comic verve, employing a funny, pinched falsetto when Charley is impersonating his aunt.

[15] He appeared in mid-2013 at The Muny, St. Louis, Missouri in Shrek the Musical as Lord Farquaad,[2] and in Mary Poppins as Bert.

[19] From September 2015 to March 2016, McClure appeared as Max in the new Ken Ludwig play A Comedy of Tenors at the Cleveland Playhouse and then at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, New Jersey.