Adam Driver (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

 

Hold On To Me Darling

Playwright Kenneth Lonergan's revival of his 2016 play has much to offer in its new incarnation. Once again directed by Neil Pepe, the finely tuned cast brings out the humor and pathos in fits and starts. The running time of almost three hours gives the playwright an extended amount of time to unravel the plot. The long first act drags at times, but all the plot machinations are more fully developed after intermission.

Hold On To Me Darling opens on Strings McCrane (Adam Driver), a hugely popular Country Western star and sometime movie actor. He is distraught and filled with angst as he learns of the death of his mother. This death has caused immeasurable pain, and Strings undergoes an existential crisis in a hotel suite in Kansas City, Mo, where he gets the phone call of his mother's untimely demise.

His answer to his unhappiness seems to be to give up his career and throw everything away and move back home to Beaumont, Tennessee to bury his mother and tend the local feed store. His assistant Jimmy (Keith Nobbs), who seems to be obsessed with his boss, attempts to distract him to no avail, but when he recommends the hotel masseuse, to salve Strings' tortured, grieving mind, that works.

Strings strikes up a conversation with the masseuse, Nancy (Heather Burns), who confesses her adoration of his musical talent as she gives him a massage. He may be grieving, but his habit of taking advantage of his adoring fans takes the upper hand. This long sequence seems forced, and a hoary plot device.

Heather Burns, Adam Driver (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

To complicate matters, Nancy attends Strings' mother's funeral, where he becomes reacquainted with his long lost second cousin Essie (Adelaide Clemens) at the funeral home. Well, pop in another cliché as Strings now has another woman that he becomes obsessed with. She is slower to accept his advances, but inevitably does.

Adelaide Clemens, Adam Driver (Photo: Julieta Cervantes)

Strings also gets to reconnect with his half-brother, Duke (C.J. Wilson). Strings' outlandish desire to leave his fame and fortune and share the feed store with Duke meets initial resistance. But finally, Duke reconsiders the possibility, and the deed is done. With consequences.

Nancy and Essie, the two ladies in Strings' life, do of course have a dueling session that harks back to the film All About Eve. Nancy has been harboring ulterior motives that hang like red herrings throughout the play. The connect the dots scenario does follow a certain schematic pattern.

Performances contribute mightily to the show's effects. Adam Driver's Strings McCrane towers over the production, effortlessly commanding the fairly small space at the Lucille Lortel. His accent in initial scenes is very heavy, as if he's trying too hard, borderline mocking the vocal inflections of his character. Driver himself has a very magnetic personality. He infuses Strings with a wounded-bird persona as well as simple-minded egotistical naivete. As Nancy, Heather Burns gives a subtle, savvy performance, wavering between sweet and adoring, and shifty and manipulative. The audience is not overly aware of it at first, but as the play progresses her true character comes forth. Adelaide Clemens as Essie give a sensitive and credible performance, no matter her emotional conflicts with Strings.

Lonergan has written a convoluted plot that unfurls in brief vignettes, giving the work a herky-jerky sense of time and space. Kudos go to set designer Walt Spangler's amazing rotating scenic design that sets the scene in various locales. The small stage of the Lucille Lortel is a swirling emotional vortex at times, and the set reflects it. Costumes by Suttirat Larlarb are spot-on, with, in particular, an unmistakable reference to Johnny Cash in Strings' all-black garb.

Hang On To Me Darling seems to be going in forward and reverse. It ends with a real emotional surprise and tonal shift, as an unexpected character, Mitch (Frank Wood) appears in the last, fraught fifteen minutes. This verbal exchange steers the play to a quiet epiphany; the final scene has heft and resonance. But in a daring anti-romantic conclusion it leaves Strings yet again disoriented, even devastated, with no easy resolution.

Hold On To Me Darling

Through December 22nd

At The Lucille Lortel Theater, 121 Christopher Street

Tickets: https://tickets.holdontomedarling.com/booking/calendar/41825/2024-09?qt=1