In Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, Cruelty Provides the Muse
Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen seems like a revival. It’s not — its first run was in 2015 — but there’s something deep in its pipes that feels old, old, old. Some of that is due to the period: McDonagh’s touch for 1960s detail and ear for England’s Northern dialect creates that world-gone-by, as does his paranoid Pinter-manqué atmosphere. But there are also creaks and groans down in the thriller structure itself. Most of the play takes place in a paneled Oldham pub, done in shades of Mancunian brown. When a silver fog drifts through the door, it turns dark. You know this place; the whole thing reeks of stale beer.
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‘for colored girls’ Is a Timeless Movement in Compassion
After playwright Ntozake Shange’s death in 2018, her sister—the playwright Ifa Bayeza—said, “I don’t think there’s a day on the planet when there’s not a young woman who discovers herself through the words of my sister.” As I watched the revival of Shange’s “choreopoem” for colored girls who have considered suicide / when the rainbow […]
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‘How I Learned To Drive’ is a Nuanced Exploration of Memory
As the adage goes, “More Vogel, less Mamet.” Right now on Broadway, this is just beginning to come true, or at least approaching it. Although we have to suffer through both David Mamet’s problematic and dangerous rant about male teachers being pedophiles and a lackluster revival of American Buffalo, we also are graced–thank God–with a […]
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