HANGMEN
by Martin McDonaugh
Directed by Matthew Dunster
John Golden Theatre
Official Website
Reviewed by David Spencer
A little known fact in the US is that, until capital punishment was banned in the UK, the veteran hangmen who executed the doomed were celebrities of a sort, almost like sports figures. And why wouldn’t they be? Men who have legally racked up one system-sanctioned kill after another—irrespective of the condemned person’s actual guilt, so long as the law has proclaimed him or her guilty—are inherently fascinating.
In reality, two of the most prominent, Harry Wade and Albert Pierrepoint, were enigmas, as far as their work was concerned. Wade saw it as a job—Pierrepoint even saw it as a calling: He actively believed it was not a deterrent to violent crime, but that he had a responsibility to give the people in his charge a quick death of quiet dignity.
Martin McDonaugh’s Hangmen dispenses with that kind of moral contemplation and just delivers a flat-out comedy thriller. His main character, an utterly fictionalized Harry (David Threlfall), has no particular interest in the dignity of the condemned, but he is interested in getting the job done efficiently, even if he has to cosh the poor soul into insensibility to get him into position. An execution in which the guilt of the prisoner remains in question after the deed is done is the trigger for this twisty comedy-thriller, most of whose story takes place three years thereafter—in 1965, hanging recently having been abolished—in a Northern bar; for in his day job, the blustery know-it-all Harry is a publican. He, his wife Alice (Tracie Bennett) and their teenage daughters Shirley (Gaby French) live above the shop. And one day, breaking into his cadre of “regular” customers comes a young man, Mooney (Allie Allen): cocky, fearless, menacing without threatening anything, seeming always to dance on the edge of full-out psychosis, but leaving it up to you to suspect him. (In some ways, a character right out of Pinter.) But he also brings ambiguity into the mix, especially upon a second visit. Was he the murderer who should have been hanged? And has he kidnapped Shirley, who has gone missing since he met her? And what does Harry’s much-maligned hangman’s assistant Syd (Andy Nyman) have to do with it all? Hilarity and calamity ensue.
For me, Hangmen features McDonaugh’s most engaging set of characters, and I think it’s because he’s crossed that fine line between larger than life and iconic. There is, weirdly, something O’Neill-like echoing around the pub, a remnant of that other establishment run by a publican sharing the same first name, Harry Hope’s Saloon. It’s a higher class establishment, but it’s still a place where illusions are kept alive and realities are best kept at bay.
I’ve seen this Matthew Dunster-directed production of Hangmen three times: live-in-person (London [2016], off-Broadway at the Atlantic Theatre [2018]—with the cast that transferred to Broadway in 2020 and closed in previews due to COVID lockdown—and now at the John Golden Theatre (also few times via the National Theatre Live screening of the London engagement) with three sets of lead players…and it’s a remarkably consistent and solid experience; and the cast has never been less than exceptional.
So allow me to inject a personal note…David Threlfall’s performance as Harry has been touted as Titanic and it is; per the script, his Harry is a man of massive defenses and cognitive dissonance in his world of right and wrong, value and worthlessness. And Threlfall has all that nailed. He’s compelling and powerful and does the role proud.
And yet…
For me, he’s not quite as effective a Harry as David Morrissey (the role’s originator, who can be seen in the NTLive video) or Mark Addy (the one you may have missed in NYC due to COVID lockdown). And why?
They have a more nuanced sense of light comedy, which has a fascinating and alchemical way of humanizing Harry, so he’s not so relentlessly an implacable brick wall. It brings out his contradictions more; and, I hate to say it, makes him more sympathetic, even though objectively he shouldn’t be…which ropes us into the play’s fabric of ambiguity and uncertainty too. Merely for the act of observing. How is it that we’re rooting for this guy?
But this is one of those situations where you can’t miss what you haven’t experienced. And if you have experienced either or both of those others…Threlfall won’t disappoint. He’s just in a different zone.
In any event, rather like the condemned man whose tragic end starts the play, the run of Hangmen is limited, closing on June 18. Get to the John Golden before time’s up.