Hang on! This isn't funny - it's just cruel: Hangmen review

By Patrick Marmion for the Daily Mail

Published: 18:21 EST, 24 September 2015 | Updated: 20:03 EST, 24 September 2015

Hangmen (Royal Court Theatre, London)

Verdict: Nasty, brutish and long

Rating:

The critics have been generous in their praise of the new play from Sting lookalike Martin McDonagh. They have marvelled at his crafty plotting, his pitch black comedy and wicked characters.

For me, though, it’s another in a line of misanthropic offerings (The Beauty Queen Of Leenane, The Lieutenant Of Inishmore) which usually make fun of stereotypical Irish bog trotters.

This time, McDonagh turns his beady eye on the people of Lancashire. His hero is real-life hangman Harry Allen, who’s embittered by playing second fiddle to chief executioner Albert Pierrepoint.

Hangmen is another in a line of misanthropic offerings which usually make fun of stereotypical Irish bog trotters, writes Patrick Marmion

Hangmen is another in a line of misanthropic offerings which usually make fun of stereotypical Irish bog trotters, writes Patrick Marmion

It gets off to a genuinely chilling start with Harry’s cold-blooded hanging of a desperate young man protesting his innocence.

We then repair to Oldham, following the abolition of capital punishment in 1965. Here, Harry runs a dismal pub where a cheeky young cockney is plotting revenge, by running off with Harry’s chubby daughter (one of the running gags: she’s fat).

The play can be funny in a scabrous, cynical and distasteful kind of way. Guffaws go up at politically incorrect gags about women, paraplegics and the mentally ill. The one about Africa being full of monkeys is quite properly greeted with tumbleweed.

Ortonesque farce is cannily played with a corpse behind a curtain and Pinteresque wordplay has the men locked in endless one-upmanship.

On stage: Reece Shearsmith as Syd, Simon Rouse as Arthur, Josef Davies as Hennessy and David Morrissey as Harry in Hangmen at Royal Court Theatre, London

On stage: Reece Shearsmith as Syd, Simon Rouse as Arthur, Josef Davies as Hennessy and David Morrissey as Harry in Hangmen at Royal Court Theatre, London

Harry lords it over the chorus of partially deaf, alcoholic numbskulls propping up his bar. The underlying dramatic technique is ‘give a dog a bad name and hang it’.

Matthew Dunster’s production is certainly impressive and sharply acted on Anna Fleischle’s set of a grim green prison cell yielding to a dingy northern boozer.

As Harry, David Morrissey is dour, dapper and imperiously contemptuous of Reece Shearsmith, his stuttering Ernie Wise-ish flunkie.

At least Harry is put in his place, late on, by the terrifying John Hodgkinson as his dreaded rival, Pierrepoint.

Best of all is Johnny Flynn as the cheeky cockney — an explosive mix of Russell Brand and Michael Caine.

There is, however, no escaping the McDonagh sneer and his mean-spirited gags make for a poisonous night out. Satire used to be turned on the powerful. Here it’s turned on the weak. And it goes on for two-and-a-half hours, which means it’s nasty, brutish — and long. 

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