Death settles score in maestro of macabre’s ‘Hangmen’
Death has always been a source of pride for Harry. He knows how to keep it dignified, even “sacrosanct,” in his bowler hat and bow tie, firmly clutching his lapels as if forcing his executioner hands to stay sheathed. He knows his tally, of course, but he wouldn’t share such a gruesome, dehumanizing stat with just anyone — at least not on the first ask.
Martin McDonagh’s “Hangmen,” whose West Coast premiere opened Saturday, April 6, at San Jose Stage Company, pulls the gallows trapdoor out from under Harry (Will Springhorn Jr.) in a couple of ways. It’s 1965, and England has just abolished hanging, depriving Oldham’s second-best hangman of his primary income and purpose (though his grimy small-town pub full of hangers-on should furnish plenty of opportunities to relive the glory days). It’s also the day that death, perhaps punishing Harry’s hubris in imagining himself its handmaiden all these years, returns not to ask his help but settle the score.
But since the dark comedy is by McDonagh — the maestro of the macabre behind “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” onstage, “In Bruges” and “The Banshees of Inisherin” onscreen — Harry cannot view his reversal of fortune as retribution. In the McDonagh universe, melodramatic realization and sentimental repentance do not exist. In lieu of moralizing, there is high style: slick banter or silken monologue that makes the world seem all the grislier precisely because it refuses to be horrified by itself. It’s ugly and beautiful at the same time, made musical by the characters’
pungent Manchester brogues.
In “Hangmen,” the Academy Award winner and Tony Award nominee reveals himself once more as the bard of bloviation, among the smartest about what makes people exquisitely stupid. Deaf barfly Arthur (Randall King), for instance, feels the need to process aloud why it’s funny to refer to a grown man’s mother worrying about him: “He’s not even that young, he’s probably got his own place to stay, like a flat!” And then there’s Harry hype man Bill (Nick Mandracchia), who accepts every insult hurled his way so long as it’s accompanied with a pint refill.
Under the direction of James Reese, the show doesn’t achieve all it might. A pall of hesitance lingers over the proceedings, dulling what ought to be crisply etched comic relationships. Far too often, the ensemble members stand inert in a horizontal line, expressionless, waiting for their turn to speak as if they’re in a school pageant.
But whenever mysterious Londoner Mooney (Matthew Kropschot) breezes in, the production course-corrects. With his mop top, mod plaids and pointy boots, he’s a walking Mersey Beat soundtrack revealing how benighted small-town hangings seem on aesthetics alone. The symbolism is not that tidy, though; he self-identifies as “menacing,” and his scroll-length speeches, in which he meticulously dissects the tension in the room and how he himself has caused it, steamroll away the possibility of retort. Logic melts before him, as do young women, and Kropschot makes it all a pheromones radiating, finger-licking brew, reveling in each phrase as if it’s his last meal on death row.
“Hangmen” sets up and reveals its surprises with an elegance that a first-rate hangman could appreciate, all clean lines and payoffs following natural laws. But as it makes an eleventhhour pivot toward buddy comedy, complete with the old trope of the retired veteran returning for one last job, you might find yourself wanting more substance under all the style — not a moral, of course, but a reason to care, a revealing point of view or an ending that’s more than a shrug.