Red Phoenix Theatre/Holden Street Theatres. The Studio. 26 Oct 2025
Irish playwright/screenwriter Martin McDonagh’s work for stage and film is redolent with incisive black humour. Suddenly daring audiences over the hill of unsettling plot surprises and somehow despite it all, to laugh even if choking back or silently inner giggling.
Hangmen centres on a momentous historical moment in UK history. End of capital punishment; the noose, hanging, was partially introduced in 1965. Made fully permanent in 1969. Meet them. Visit their twisted world. Twisted morality. Twisted humour.
Managing balance of absurdist darkness and light in McDonagh’s script, along with its pacing is Director Nick Fagan’s humongous challenge. Too dark and fast, lose the impact. Too slow and lighter in levity, also lose impact as well as meaning. It’s a hard ride to balance and he manages it.
Fagan gets the gist of Hangmen in the crucial first scene on which so much to follow is dependent, the last fatefully stuffed up execution Harry Wade (Brant Eustice) and assistant Syd Armfield (Jack Robins) carried out. A young lad later found to be innocent.
A black, challenging scene, it sets the tone for the production.
Banter between Hennessy (Trevor Anderson), protesting his innocence and Harry Wade cajoling, then viciously subduing the doomed man is wickedly absorbing. Play like yet appalling in its ordinary, yet artfully delivered, laughter inducing, bent cheeriness.
They’re quite a piece of work these former Hangmen. Harry Wade particularly, reigning supreme in his noose adorned pub, monstrous ego suborning cobbled together sympathetic locals; Deaf Arthur (Greg Janzow,) Charlie (Leighton Vogt,) stylish gin tippling wife Alice (Rachel Dalton) and moody daughter Shirley (Finty McBain).
Distinctly powerful pall of jovial morbidity emanates from Wade’s glee laden preening pride about his former profession and status. Permeates his every sledgehammer delivered word, even if meant in easy going bar jest. Lies leaden over all assembled, with the exception of old comrade Inspector Fry (Russell Slater.)
The world in Act One is bleakly chilly even if Richard Parkhill’s lighting offers a delicious warm hued wash over the set and upbeat tunes of the 60s play in scene changes.
Ennobling death at hands of “servants of the Crown, “deserving of circumspection and quiet self-counsel is a sickening thing to ponder even if such pomposity is absurd in its hilarity. Especially when Wade gives a newspaper interview to Derek Clegg (Tom Tassone).
Cracking the façade of this world is an equally arrogant, quite bitter, dangerous witted pub blow in Pom Peter Mooney (Joshua Coldwell.)
In Mooney, McDonagh has an anti-Wade type. Or is he? Mooney denies he and the Inspector know each other. Berates locals even as he sits apart from them. Shatters the power structure of the pub. Certainly doesn’t kowtow to the Hangman.
Coldwell’s Mooney is magnificently equal to Eustice’s Wade. They pass very pointed barbs in Act One, but no more. After Mooney has had a chat with Shirley and suggests a later catch up, she heads out ahead of Mooney.
Act Two is rapid paced with an edginess obliterating heady self-congratulatory, boorish, selfish and controlling darkness of Act One in which Wade pulls every string.
Armfield’s guilt over Hennessy has manifested itself fully. He knows Mooney. Mooney knows he may be suspect over Shirley’s disappearance. Is he?
Wade’s Hangmen code of security is suddenly violated.
In essence, law or lawlessness become intertwined in a confusing battle mired in judgemental controlling vengefulness.
No matter how dark or dire Act Two gets, as the clock ticks down to a final moment, McDonagh is still pulling out blackest, absurd humour. The great, very angry Hangman Alfred Pierrepoint’s (Gary George) rage over Wade’s describing him as smelling like death is the most brilliant comic counterpoint to a most shocking hidden moment.
The absolute absurdity is the point of Hangmen. Death as law. Absurd. Celebrating its demise while lauding it. Absurd. So absurd it needs to be funny to see just how absurd it all is.
David O’Brien
When: 24 Oct to 2 Nov
Where: The Studio, Holden Street Theatres
Bookings: holdenstreettheatres.com
