Kim Clifton and Robert Snars in HANGMEN Photos © Bob Seary
Six years ago, Deborah Mulhall directed one of the highlights of New Theatre’s 2018 season with The Lieutenant of Inishmore and now she has done it again with another Martin McDonagh play, HANGMEN.
Pinter’s prints with thumb on menace, forefinger on creepy, and pinky on the manipulation of language are all over McDonagh’s play, but like fingerprints, his writing, structure and style is unique and individual and gobsmackingly gifted and good. A master not a mimic.
Given enough wicked, writerly rope, McDonagh executes an exquisite script that is all at once a meditation on capital punishment, a domestic drama, and a disturbingly funny thriller.
The irony is not lost that in the middle of the “Swinging Sixties”, state sanctioned strangulation and fatal spine fracture was abolished in the United Kingdom. The decade might swing but convicted murderers would not. That means that Harry Wade, who until recently was known as the second best hangman in Britain, will rest on his lethal laurels, basking in his end of the rope reputation.
It was noose work when he could get it but now he holds court in the pub he runs with his wife, Alice, surrounded by a bunch of barflies that include a local copper.
The death knell of capital punishment instigates an investigative journalist, Doris Clegg, to interview Harry, and flattered and flirty with the female reporter, confides in her his neck and neck rivalry with Albert Pierrepoint, whose claim as best hangman in Britain was inflated by a flurry of Nazi war criminal executions. This imbalance has left Harry ropeable.
All this excellent and expedient exposition is followed by the entrance of a modish mop head stranger with an enigmatic charm seeking lodgings and perhaps something more sinister. Calling himself Mooney he initially charms Alice, then her anxious, awkward teenage daughter, Shirley.
Kim Clifton as Shirley and Robert Snars as the menacing Mooney are particularly fine, her innocence and his insouciance a marvellous contrast.
Nathan Farrow as Harry Wade, full time publican part time executioner, is super as the strutting cock sparrow of the gallows as is Sonya Kerr as Alice, his taken for granted spouse.
Jack Elliot Mitchell brings a glorious gormless quality to Harry’s past apprentice lyncher, Syd Armfield, Georgia Nicholas delights as era accurate dolly bird reporter Doris Clegg, Jim McCrudden brings a rear guard gravitas as rival hangman, Albert Pierrepoint, and supporting character upholstery is delivered by the barflies, Alastair Brown, Tom Massey, Gerry Mullaly, and Reuben Solomon.
Tom Bannerman’s public bar set with scrim scaffold and noose motif is an exciting exaggeration, nicely augmented by Helen Kohlhagen’s costumes and Tim Carter’s lighting.
