Downtown theatre Le Chat Noir premiered its production of Martin McDonagh’s play “Hangmen” on Friday, which boasted a sold-out show. The rest of the weekend didn’t fare too poorly either, as busy theatregoers crowded the lobby at its Saturday night show.
“Hangmen,” the directorial debut of Tom Colechin, is the eighth produced show by the McDonagh, a British playwright who staked his claim in the London theatre scene starting in the mid-90s by drawing on his working-class Northern Irish family background. Most of his early plays — including “The Lieutenant of Inishmore,” which Le Chat performed in 2010 — are set in or near County Galway in Ireland.
And pretty much all his plays are dark comedies, drawing as much humor from macabre, violent and even tragic situations as from the homespun quirks, colloquialisms and community manners of Northern Irish townsfolk.
Save for its British setting, “Hangmen” is no different in this regard. Set in the mid-1960s in the Northern English town of Oldham, the play’s backdrop is the abolition of capital punishment in the United Kingdom.
Le Chat’s executive director Krys Bailey stars as the play’s protagonist, Harry Wade, the second best (or at least the second most famous) hangman in all of England. In keeping with McDonagh’s incisive, insightful and irreverent use of — no pun intended — gallows humor, Bailey’s portrayal is more reminiscent of an endearing sitcom dad than a man who’s spent over 20 years doing the dirtiest job for the royal crown.
Anyone familiar with McDonagh’s work would know that characterization is on brand, and Bailey doesn’t disappoint in following suit. Wade is at turns loud, rude, sweet, charming, empathetic, petty, narcissistic, obtuse, good-natured, kindly and cruel, with as much self-awareness and understanding about that cold and terrible nature of his life’s work and legacy as much as a tendency to evade self-reflection on that same brutality.
Harry Wade’s wife Alice, played by Amy Patton, helps run the pub he owns. Alice, plainly, is a sweetheart who tuts her husband about his foul language and takes care not to trigger their teenage daughter Shirley’s depression (or “mopeyness”). Patton’s performance makes Alice something of the heart of the play — perhaps the closest the story has to a moral center—as her character is stern and sensible when she needs to be, and let’s loose her emotions at moments where using one’s heart suffices where no one is using their head.
The Wades’ pub is where most of the action takes place, and is something like the Cheers of Oldham. Local theatre veterans Michael Silvio Fortino and Rick Davis play Charlie and Arthur, respectively, a comic duo of daffy and often dense barflies, whose brief interludes seem at first just vaudevillian comic relief in a show that’s already funny; but whose presence is necessary to add both color and humanity to the play’s increasingly grotesque proceedings.
Mickey Lay plays Mooney, a mysterious stranger who visits the Wades’ pub with muddied and menacing intentions. Lay adds subtlety that isn’t used much elsewhere in the play, at least at first. His presence is initially so unassuming that it gradually becomes unsettling, so that by the time the character’s behavior takes it a turn, it’s somehow not unexpected and still shocking.
To describe too much of the show’s plot would spoil a lot of the journey and a lot of the jokes. Suffice it to say, “Hangmen” is the story of an executioner grappling with retirement and changing times. In between — or perhaps within — all that harsh language, dirty jokes, dark humor and violence, implied and otherwise, is a story as much about wrestling with right, wrong and regret. Highly recommended for more than a few good laughs, and pint or more worth of good conversation afterward.
“Hangmen” will be performed at Le Chat Noir for another weekend, May 18-20, at 8 p.m. For tickets visit www.lcnaugusta.com.
Skyler Q. Andrews is a staff reporter for The Augusta Press. Reach him at skyler@theaugustapress.com.
