The elf ’n’ safety rules keeping death row safe!
It’s safety first when Hangmen, the hottest new play in London, transfers from the Royal Court theatre into the West end.
the show, starring David Morrissey, is a blisteringly funny black comedy by Martin McDonagh about what happens to the second-best hangman in the country after capital punishment is abolished.
But the mechanics of nooses and trap doors have to be carefully monitored on stage.
‘It’s a big set, with tricks and surprises, and safety is the key,’ noted Matthew Byam shaw, who will be producing the play with Robert fox when it opens at Wyndham’s theatre on December 1.
Morrissey, who plays Harry Wade — a fictional executioner loosely based on Harry allen, one of Britain’s last hangmen — told me that stage crew and members of the cast ‘ have specific jobs’ to ensure any death row characters are kept safe.
the run at the Royal Court, which ends on October 10, has had people queuing for returns and marks a triumphant return to form for McDonagh, who wrote the Beauty Queen Of Leenane for the stage and the comic movie masterpiece In Bruges.
Hangmen deals with weighty issues, all seen t hrough McDonagh’s deliciously wicked eye. ‘ We start with a state murder — they execute a man and there’s evidence that he might be innocent,’ Morrissey observed.
It ends with an act of chilling mob violence. ‘so it’s about the need for people to have revenge, and carry out a form of justice.’
although set in the early sixties, Hangmen nonetheless paints a vision of england that sadly echoes the way casual sexism and racism is prevalent today. Morrissey worried aloud about the fact that quite a lot of people ‘ are up for the idea’ of bringing back hanging.
But McDonagh believes in delivering an equal opportunity kicking. ‘No one is left out,’ said Morrissey, who gives the p performance of his career as a bully of a man who represents a world gone by.
His co-star, Johnny flynn, p plays a mysterious, menacing character who shows up in theh pub. He represents the n new world, which wants to sws weep away t he Harry W Wades.
Morrissey, who starred in t TV drama extant and the hit U.s. series the Walking Dead, jumped at the opportunity to return to the stage the minute his agent uttered the words ‘Martin McDonagh’ and ‘Royal Court’.
‘McDonagh writes in such a beautiful rhythm that you turn off all your phones and lock the door to your office to read it,’ he said. the play has had mostly fivestar notices, with one or two dissenting voices, so I asked Morrissey if he’d had any doubts about playing a man with such a dark soul.
He told me that McDonagh asks his audience to look at men like Wade with a ‘funny, critical eye’.
‘I don’t think you always have to like your characters. But you do have to empathise with them,’ he said.
Most of the ensemble will move to Wyndham’s, but Reece shearsmith — who has several moments of the best physical comedy I’ve seen on stage this year, playing Harry’s assistant — is not able to transfer because he’s off to work on TV show Inside Number 9.