New York Times Review of the Hangman Movie
Review: A Criminally Enjoyable 'Hangmen' From Martin McDonagh
- Hangmen
- NYT Critic's Pick
- Off Broadway, Comedy/Drama , Play
- 2 hrs. and fifteen min.
- Closing Appointment:
- Atlantic Theater Company at the Linda Gross Theater, 336 Due west. 20th St.
- 866-811-4111
Please allow him to innovate himself, not that he's remotely shy about doing so. He'southward a man of stealth and taste, a smooth talker out of 1960s London who dresses like a Teddy boy and seduces with buttery brashness.
The proper name of this spiffy young devil, whose contemptuous charm is dripping from the stage of the Linda Gross Theater, is Mooney. He's a dab hand at misdirection, the sort of fellow who sets even stolid minds spinning in paranoia and perplexity.
Mooney, it must be said, has a lot in mutual with the artful playwright who created him.
That would be Martin McDonagh, whose criminally enjoyable "Hangmen," a juicy tale of capital punishment and other forms of retribution, opened on Monday night. And aren't we happy that Mr. McDonagh, who of late has more often than not been otherwise engaged with movies (including the serious Oscar contender "3 Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri"), has reclaimed his curtain every bit the great deceiver of contemporary theater?
Mooney, portrayed with fabulous insinuating swagger by Johnny Flynn, is the chief troublemaker in this sly pharynx-gripping mystery, which originated at London'southward Royal Courtroom Theater and arrives here courtesy (thank you lot!) of the Atlantic Theater Visitor. And though it might exist an overstatement to telephone call Mooney Mr. McDonagh'due south alter-ego, you lot must admit that their methods of grabbing — and belongings — our attending are non dissimilar.
Planting false information, taking advantage of our willingness to believe the worst, diverting our focus with left-field wordplay, investing everyday details with ominous import, making sick jokes that may not be jokes at all. Such tools are part of both Mooney's and Mr. McDonagh's modus operandi in this dark tale of Northern England, ready largely in a pub owned by a man whose life's piece of work has only been made illegal.
That profession provides the title of "Hangmen," which is directed with gleaming precision and smiling relish by Matthew Dunster. And before we settle in for a cozy, chilly chat with some loquacious drinkers at their local, nosotros get to see our leading executioner in action. His name is Harry (Marker Addy, beginning-charge per unit), who has the complacent, well-fed wait of an eater of beef and death-dealing servant of the crown.
Paradigm
In the opening scene, set up in 1963, Harry, aided past his stuttering banana, Syd (a creature of Dickensian furtiveness, equally played by Reece Shearsmith), secures the noose around the neck of a convicted young murderer who dies protesting his innocence. Played with blazing desperation by Gilles Geary, the doomed man gasps out a terminal-minute promise to haunt his assassins. ("Well, that's not a prissy thing to say, is it?" says a peeved Syd.)
Call up his name: Hennessy. Harry and Syd certainly will.
2 years after, Hennessy inevitably comes upwardly in the conversation at the pub that Harry now owns. It is, as Harry puts information technology "a momentous bloody 24-hour interval," the date on which capital punishment has been fabricated obsolete.
A young reporter (Owen Campbell) is there, asking for a few commemorative words from Harry, and if Harry is smart (which he ain't) he'll say nothing. In the meantime, our Mr. Mooney slithers into the pub, bringing the disharmonious vibe of a swinging, sexed-upwardly London into this frozen outpost of the middle-class 1950s.
That's about all you need in the manner of setup, though I suppose y'all should know that Harry has a very bored wife, Alice (Emerge Rogers), and a restless, terminally naïve 15-yr-old girl, Shirley (Gaby French). The denizens at Harry's bar — a sheeplike herd of enjoyably varied bleats — include an ineffectual policeman (David Lansbury), and 3 wilting barflies (Billy Carter, Richard Hollis and John Horton) who are fatigued to the place by its owner's notoriety. Lurking at the plot's edges is Harry's archrival from his hanging days, Albert (Maxwell Caulfield).
The big bailiwick of "Hangmen" is the uses and abuses of vengeance, a theme evidently much on Mr. McDonagh's heed. "Three Billboards" traces the wayward forms taken past the urge to become even in a small American boondocks. Since "Three Billboards" is a Hollywood moving-picture show, there is sunlight, existent and metaphoric, throughout, including glimmers of that audience-pleasing essential known every bit Redemption.
"Hangmen," in dissimilarity, is every bit as dark as Mr. McDonagh'southward early, bloody plays gear up in rural Ireland (including "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" and "The Lieutenant of Inishmore"). Equally for redemption, forget about it. People are either foolish or dangerously flawed in the world of "Hangmen."
For a writer of Mr. McDonagh's scalpel-edged gifts, these unadmirable qualities are joyous opportunities, allowing for the sort of conversation in which stupidity and nothingness achieve the sparkle of wit. "Hangmen" is oft very funny. But as you laugh, you lot may feel the walls of Anna Fleischle's clammy pub set closing in on you.
Image
There volition be thunder and lightning before the play ends, during a dark and stormy day in which someone goes missing and low-cal thickens, as surely as it does in "Macbeth." (All credit to Joshua Carr, the lighting designer.)
Replacing the estimable David Morrissey, whom I saw in London two years agone, Mr. Addy brings an actress layer of fatuity and vanity to Harry, which makes you doubtable that any comeuppance he receives won't seriously dent this thick skin. The excellent Ms. Rogers returns as Harry's frowzy helpmeet, a adult female narcotized by monotony, who can still put on the dog for a handsome stranger.
An affectingly bad-mannered Ms. French, new to the bandage, and Mr. Flynn work upwards a thrilling fly-meets-spider chemical science in their scenes together. And though the play features ii simulated deaths (though without the usual McDonagh carnage caliber), its almost viscerally disturbing moment finds Mooney slowly, slowly tracing an arc in the air with his hand, to show Shirley he knows what a curve is.
If that doesn't audio scary to you, then you don't know Mr. McDonagh, who understands that the most profound shock furnishings are ofttimes rooted in life's virtually mundane elements. (Interestingly, he registers as more of a shrewd disciple of Alfred Hitchcock in his plays than he does in his movies.)
That's a lesson that's perfectly grasped past the sensational Mooney of Mr. Flynn, an original cast member whose resume includes Shakespeare with Mark Rylance and his own folk-rock band. Mooney revels in scrambling notions of what'due south funny and what'south frightening.
Niggling arguments about words abound in Mr. McDonagh'southward earth. "Hanged" versus "hung" as a past tense crops upwardly at the darnedest times hither. And Mooney is given to earnestly weighing the adjectives that best adjust him, as if they were neckties: creepy (no!), funny (well, non really) and menacing (absolutely).
He's wrong, though. Mooney is hilariously menacing, or do I mean menacingly hilarious? In any case, he's a happy-creepy reminder that Mr. McDonagh can still piece of work his double-edged, sinister magic on a stage, making breathless, alarmed and deeply satisfied dupes of united states of america all.
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/theater/review-hangmen-martin-mcdonagh-atlantic-theater-company.html
0 Response to "New York Times Review of the Hangman Movie"
Post a Comment