Review: Hangmen

‘If you’d only relax, you’d be dead by now!’ assistant hangman Syd yells with all the motivational energy of a Joe Wicks high intensity workout video, attempting to drag an innocent man to the gallows.

"Second-best hangman" Harry Wade insists in this powerful 1963 prologue to Martin McDonagh’s 2015 play Hangmen that ‘it’s the courts hangin’ yer, not us!’, but the rest of the play is shadowed by the loss of his notorious job following the 1965 abolition of hanging, and how this crisis of identity leads to a legacy of inadequacy and violence.

The freshers of the Downing Dramatic Society show an impressive wit in performance, with a couple of stand-out actors in a cast which, though not without its faults, is full of potential .

Running a small pub in the northern town of Oldham with his frustrated wife, Alice (Sophia Slater), Harry’s customers swarm like flies to his dark infamy and greasy Brylcreem. The Swinging Sixties have vanished before they’ve arrived in this corner of England, with suited-up Harry struggling to abandon both the self-importance and the crippling insecurity with which his time as next-best hangman to Albert Pierrepoint (Fraser Ross-Smyth) have left him.

The grim locals Bill (Cameron Burnett), Charlie (Liora Lederman) and Arthur (Fraser Ross-Smyth, a particular high point) are absurdly funny in their reactions to and derailment of Harry’s big front-page piece, having faux-reluctantly yielded to journalists’ demands for comment on the news of abolition.

This northern idyll is disrupted when a mysterious southern stranger, Mooney (played with élan by Philip Coxon), arrives in the pub to charm Harry’s young daughter and perplex the clientele with references to Kierkegaard and his unpleasantly close interest in sand.

As particular in his choice of adjectives as he is in his fruitlessly precise requests for a ‘small’ portion of peanuts (‘we only have the one size’), the enigmatic Mooney invites us to consider various descriptions of himself, as if featuring in the tell-all interview hangman Harry stumbles into. Creepy? Never! Menacing? Potentially. A riot to watch? Absolutely.

Our ‘babycham man’ swerves effortlessly from the mundane to the menacing in a way more truly disturbing than the overt on-stage violence. With all the sinister smarm of Mr Wickham with a garage in Formby, at his best he scrambles the frightening and the funny — Mooney’s uncomfortably hilarious wooing of Harry’s teenage daughter ‘mopey’ Shirley (Sam Creswick) is a highlight, expertly setting the scene for the audience’s later suspicions.

Unfortunately, the impact of the (naturally) dubious southerner’s entrance is undercut by the lack of a consistent contrast between the pub denizens’ northern tones and Mooney’s slick, brash southern accent. As soon as he walks in and orders, the locals register and mock his alien identity, but the instant scrutiny works less well when, often, the cast don’t sound too dissimilar to this apparent interloper. There are some nice bits of accent work here and there, at times adding to the humour, and Matthew Paul as Harry pulls off a particularly consistent grasp of retro northern cadence, reminiscent at times of Michael Sheen’s ill-fated 1974 Leeds manager in The Damned United.

Clem Dean’s set design works overtime; condemned man Hennessy (Cameron Burnett) starts the piece not only sitting at the table (later marking out the locals’ territory) in his cell but then clinging to its legs in desperation, bemoaning to the last his fate at being hanged by someone so second-rate (‘that’s so me!’). Seemingly incidental scenery proves to be anything but: an apparently innocuous piece of furniture morphs seamlessly into an accessory to murder. More could have been done with lighting to evoke the dank murkiness of this mid-century pub and heighten the claustrophobia of setting most of the play in this small, dark enclosure.

Nevertheless, Harry and boyish reporter Clegg (Megan Grant) facing the audience instead of each other and the blackout after Harry’s old hanging pal Syd (Fran Cahill) help to realise the gravity of the situation: both make the most of the actors’ evident talent, which speaks for itself in direct gazes at the audience.

What this production sometimes lacks in polish, it makes up for in effervescence. There’s nothing that makes me homesick quite like seeing my home town immortalised on stage as home to a mental institution for a character who likes reading out car registration plates. Even if the themes and locations of this play don’t resonate so personally, the quickfire hilarity and dark undertones of this show will guarantee you a fun evening out. Don’t hang about, get your tickets now!

3. 5 stars

Image credit: Zoe Matt-William