From the devilishly inspired mind of Martin McDonagh—Academy Award®–winning writer of THREE BILLBOARDS OUTSIDE EBBING, MISSOURI—comes HANGMEN, a killer comedy nominated for 5 Tony Awards® including Best Play. What’s Britain’s second-most famous executioner to do now that hanging has been abolished?
Drink, of course. But when a cub reporter and a mysterious stranger turn up at his pub, everything hangs in the balance. HANGMEN marks McDonagh’s seventh play on Broadway, following his Tony-nominated productions of THE PILLOWMAN and THE LIEUTENANT OF INISHMORE. Winner of the Olivier Award for Best New Play and Set Design, HANGMEN plays a strictly limited engagement at the Golden Theatre after multiple sold-out engagements in London and Off-Broadway’s Atlantic Theatre Company.
Is he a relative of someone Harry hanged looking for revenge? A reporter looking for a story? A devil come to take Harry's soul? All three of those options and plenty more beside remain on the table throughout this play and I'll keep shut on the truth, finally revealed in a way that will, I swear, turn you into the sort of goop you typically find on the head of a foaming pint of bitter.
After his success in film, including Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri, McDonagh seems to relish the chance to work in a less realistic medium (though that movie was hardly cinéma vérité). But rather than pushing that potential into new territory-as in his 2003 masterwork, The Pillowman-McDonagh winks at conventions even as he uses them to cover up a thin and implausible story. Dunster's staging adds to the sense of artifice, with lurching shifts of mood lights, Taratino-esque music cues and a physical space that works directly against the would-be suspense of the play's denouement. For a while, yes, it seems cool: Hangmen has plenty of twists. But the twists wind up forming a sloppy noose that is strong enough only to leave the play dangling, without a lethal snap, when the bottom falls out in the end.
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