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Hangmen
by Julia Polanski
Equal parts horrifying and funny, Hangmen is good enough to be criminal. If you like clever but pitch-dark humor, sharp wit, characters that you can’t quite figure out, twists, surprises, and tons of contrasts, McDonagh is your man, and Hangmen is your show. State-sanctioned murder is at the core of the play, the bulk of which takes place in a pub owned by Harry (David Threlfall), the second-greatest hangman in Great Britain. It’s the day after England has abolished hanging as capital punishment, and Harry has gone from being a public servant to serving in the pub – from the power of death to Powers ale.
There is much talk about him being the second-greatest, and thereby hangs a tale (so to speak.) His rival, Pierrepoint (John Hodgkinson), killed many more than Harry. Was he better at his job, or was it just that he hanged Germans during WWII, and Harry did not? Has Harry fallen from former glory by drawing pints in the pub? Did he even have former glory? Although it’s refreshing to see a play that doesn’t kowtow to flexible modern moral attitudes but sticks to solid truths (killing people is bad, being good at your job is admirable), McDonagh leaves you hanging on this question, as you think about having a bit of sympathy for Harry. How do we find ourselves giving a damn about a man so cruel, he’s proud of having killed hundreds of people, and envious of Pierrepoint, who killed hundreds more? Harry is cruel to his tough wife (a super performance from Tracie Bennett); cruel to his sad-sack daughter (Gaby French); cruel to the “lads” who drink in his Lancashire pub (Richard Hollis, John Horton, Ryan Pope, Jeremy Crutchley). He’s terribly cruel to his weaselly assistant in the prison (Andy Nyman). Surely, we have not become so calloused that we admire thoroughness, no matter in what form, even thoroughness in cruelty?
The community around him treats Harry as a local hero, especially the lads in the pub; they seem to venerate him, and everyone wants to know all the grisly details of being a hangman, which Harry refuses to share, calling them “sacrosanct.”
Somehow, a reporter (Owen Campbell) manages to get an interview with Harry, and after a little initial resistance, Harry spills the formerly sacrosanct secrets of being the second-greatest hangman in England. After the newspaper prints the story and the locals are thrilled, that article plays all kinds of merry hell in Harry’s life. For one thing, a very strange stranger intrudes – Mooney (Alfie Allen), clearly a Londoner, and either creepy or menacing, depending who you ask (he calls himself menacing). Is he a celebrity hound? Some kind of weirdo? Or something more sinister, perhaps a serial murderer, maybe even guilty of the murders done by someone Harry hanged? (Pay attention during the Prologue; lots of clues and hints are laid there.) Or is Mooney simply annoying as hell, the kind of guy who likes to step on your toes and blame you for putting your foot under his? One thing’s sure: Mooney is pretty clever.
For that matter, everything about Hangmen is clever; the superbly dimensional scenic design by Anna Fleischle, making great use of the space – as above, so below -- also her spot-on costuming. Joshua Carr’s lighting design sets just the right menacing mood. Period-perfect surf-guitar music intros to each scene set us firmly in Swinging England of the 1960s (sound design by Ian Dickinson for Autograph). McDonagh’s script is so polished, all that cleverness looks easy, if not simple, as if you could walk into any worn, brown pub in Lancashire and hear snappy repartee and gallows humor in north-of-England speech. The cleverness tips over into horrifying farce, at a certain point, but by then, you almost expect it; you’ve been laughing and wincing for a while, often at the same things, same time. By the end of the first act, you may perhaps think you know what’s going on; enough clues and hints are laid there that the second act seems like a foregone conclusion. Don’t be fooled -- the second act twists around like a body at the end of a noose. Hangmen is pure McDonagh: darkly humorous, bleak, surprising. Expect the unexpected, beautifully written, handsomely designed, and wonderfully performed.
Hangmen
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