Interludes

THE HANGOVER REPORT – Martin McDonagh’s unsettling, darkly comic HANGMEN, now starring Alfie Allen and David Threlfall, finally opens on Broadway

• By drediman
• April 22, 2022
• No Comments

Last night, Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen opened at the John Golden Theatre, nearly seven years after having premiered at London’s revered Royal Court Theatre. The Olivier Award-winning play was supposed to have opened on the Great White Way in March 2020 – after a sold out Off-Broadway run at Atlantic Theater Company – but it was obviously derailed by the onset of the pandemic (the production was well into previews when all in-person performances in the city were shuttered). Luckily, after a few false starts and thanks to the efforts of an insistent producing team, the acclaimed play has finally arrived on Broadway, albeit with a considerably new cast.

Hangmen takes place in 1960s Britain, soon after the country has done away with capital punishment by hanging. Largely set in a pub owned by an ex-hangman (Harry), the play gets underway when a mysterious young stranger (Mooney), enters his life (the less revealed, the better). As with many of McDonagh’s works (Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Leutenant of Inishmore, Three Billboards, etc.), the play is part psychological thriller, part dark comedy of manners that slowly simmers as the expository details come together. But as the work’s machinations start churning towards inevitability, it takes on a prismatic quality that will leave you guessing until the very end. Although the playwright’s dialogue and characterizations are for the most part broadly wrought, his writing can turn pungent and caustically slicing on a dime, often times drawing uncomfortable laughter from the audience. Ultimately, Hangmen is a study on the scary bluntness of the justice system – especially when carried out by capital punishment, lawful or not – as executed by inherently flawed human beings (which the play amusingly illustrates). That this only makes itself known well into the second act is a testament to McDonagh’s skill as a purveyor of gripping and hugely entertaining theatrical storytelling.

Despite some substantial recasting since the play’s debut in 2015, the production continues to be helmed by director Matthew Dunster. Also continuing on by his side is scenic and costume designer Anna Fleischle, whose atmospheric set design for Broadway has been souped up to include a few impressive coups. The current cast (there are only a handful of holdovers from previous mountings) at the Golden is perhaps not the sharpest I’ve seen in the play, but they’re all still nonetheless very good. As Harry, David Threlfall gives an appropriately Falstaffian performance that’s at once self-important and buffoonish. As the mysterious interloper Mooney, Alfie Allen (of Game of Thrones fame) is solid, although somewhat lacking the intensity and menace of his predecessors (especially the sensational Johnny Flynn, whom I caught at the Atlantic). The rest of the accomplished cast do well to create amusing caricatures that keep McDonagh’s play unsettlingly tip-toeing between hilarity and the macabre.

RECOMMENDED

HANGMEN
Broadway, Play
John Golden Theatre
2 hours, 20 minutes (with one intermission)
Through June 18