Hangmen
Opening Night: April 21, 2022
Theater: Golden Theatre
Website: hangmenbroadway.com
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.
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April 21, 2022
But no fleur is as mal right now as the one that opened on Thursday at the Golden Theater: “Hangmen,” Martin McDonagh’s rip-roaringly hilarious yet profoundly horrific play about the abolition of capital punishment. Or rather its endurance. For in this deeply cynical tale, set in the final days of the death penalty in England, we see how “justified” murder, no longer state sanctioned, survives by other means.
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April 21, 2022
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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April 21, 2022
Familiar phrases like “gallows humor,” “swinging sixties,” and “neck and neck” take on a disturbingly literal meaning when applied to “Hangmen,” Martin McDonaugh’s old-fashioned and highly entertaining new black comedy.
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April 21, 2022
Sneaky, menacing and funny are descriptions that come up more than once in Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, but not one of the three words quite does justice to this irresistibly pitch-black comedy, opening tonight at the Golden Theatre on Broadway.
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April 21, 2022
Anna Fleischle’s massive set keeps Harry’s pub from feeling too cramped, and there are enough surprising reveals to keep things interesting. But tonally, “Hangmen” is all over the place — it starts off with dark humor, moves to drama and thriller and ends with slapstick involving a noose and a chair.
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April 21, 2022
With its tired jokes and dated humor, Hangmen provides an easy laugh, but it’s a difficult watch for those of us trying to be better audiences; questioning and interrogating works of culture that don’t quite sit right with our conversations around contemporary politics.
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April 21, 2022
Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, which had its long-awaited Broadway premiere tonight, is an often hilarious play set at a pub owned by a mild-mannered former executioner, not yet put out of his misery but certainly of his former calling.
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April 21, 2022
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.
READ THE REVIEWApril 21, 2022
It’s a fabulous offering — a throwback, really, to the heyday of juicy, creepy London imports by McDonagh (”Pillowman”), Conor McPherson (”Shining City”) and Mark Ravenhill (”Jerusalem”). Meticulously directed by Matthew Dunster and designed within an inch of its life by the brilliant Anna Fleischle, it offers up dextrous plotting, sardonic satire, subtle observations about the gray northern life and, above all, an unforgettable central character in Harry, a hangman who also loses his job and who also decides to run a pub in Oldham, Lancashire.
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April 21, 2022
In the Atlantic Theater production, some of the pub’s hangers-on were played too broadly. A few of them seemed left over from McDonagh’s “Leenane” trilogy. That’s not the case on Broadway. Owen Campbell, Jeremy Crutchley, Josh Goulding, Richard Hollis, John Horton and Ryan Pope complete the near-perfect ensemble under Dunster’s direction. “Hangmen” is this Broadway season’s best play.
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April 21, 2022
One of the happiest perks and biggest pitfalls of a theater reviewer’s job is the opportunity to see off-Broadway shows again when they transfer to Broadway. It’s always a pleasure to watch a show you like on a bigger stage, especially when you think it really deserved to move; and it’s just as sad when you realize that a return viewing can’t live up to your first time. Those are the feelings I wrestle with as I type this review of Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, which ran at the Atlantic Theatre Company in 2018 and had the unfortunate timing of starting previews at the John Golden Theatre on February 28, 2020.
READ THE REVIEWApril 21, 2022
“Hangmen,” Martin McDonagh’s black comedy about an ex-executioner, which opens tonight on Broadway, had a run Off-Broadway four years ago with the same director and the same design team. But as much the same as it is, my reaction to the play has changed. My opinion has gone from a thumbs up with caveats to a qualified thumbs down.
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The sets, by Anan Fleischele (who won one of those Oliviers), are an ingenious construction, their interlocked parts sliding out and up like oversize drawers in a cabinet of wonders. And director Matthew Dunster, another London alumnus, keeps the action moving at a brisk but unhurried clip, ferreting out the deeper feeling embedded in the script even as the tone walks a tricky line between tragedy and farce. (Imagine a very special episode of Cheers, viewed through a pint-glass filter of neck-snapping nihilism and Northern accents.)
READ THE REVIEWApril 21, 2022
“Hangmen” has been directed by Matthew Dunster with an expert sense of balance, the humor bubbling on a low simmer even when tragedy seems to beat against the pub windows like the driving rain. Each of the ensemble cast precisely etches his or her neatly defined character.
READ THE REVIEWApril 21, 2022
After intermission, McDonagh gives his Plot-o-Matic a few more cranks, but what keeps you focused on Hangmen is the retro mood and the superb ensemble, not innovative storytelling or genuine insight into character. His plays are tightly constructed, with dialogue that uses repetition and profanity to musical effect, but they are woefully mechanical.
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