Hangmen

Hangmen is a play by the British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. It received its world premiere at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in September 2015, before transferring to the West End's Wyndham's Theatre. The play was directed by Matthew Dunster, designed by Anna Fleischle, and featured David Morrissey and Reece Shearsmith among others. It was universally acclaimed by theatre critics, and was nominated for numerous awards including the Olivier Awards, Critics' Circle Theatre Awards and the Evening Standard Theatre Awards. For its U.S. premiere in 2018 at Off-Broadway's Atlantic Theater Company, Hangmen won the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play. Synopsis After a 1963 prologue showing British executioner Harry Wade at work, hanging a man, Hennessy, who goes to his grave proclaiming his innocence and pronouncing a curse on Harry, Hangmen flashes forward to 1965 in a town in northern England. The action centers around Harry, who we discover is the second-best hangman in the land. Harry owns a pub that he also lives above with his wife, Alice, and his fifteen-year-old daughter, Shirley. Harry is contending with the abolition of hanging in Britain while the pub is filled with cronies and sycophants, as well as a journalist who is trying to interview Harry about the abolition. Despite continually protesting that he has nothing to say on the record, Harry eventually takes the journalist upstairs and gives him an extensive interview, complete with disparaging remarks about the number-one hangman in England, named Pierrepont. A smiling but menacing stranger named Mooney comes to the pub and stirs up some trouble, causing consternation among Harry and his cronies. Mooney inquires if there are any rooms about to let, and Alice offers him a room upstairs. But when Alice tries to call his references, Mooney explodes. Mooney also creepily flirts with Harry's daughter, Shirley, who later appears to go missing. Over the next day or so, Mooney toys with Harry and leads him and his wife to believe that Mooney has kidnapped their daughter, Shirley. We learn that Mooney is in cahoots with Syd, one of the men in the bar and Harry's assistant hangman whom Harry has always treated with contempt. Syd is conspiring with Mooney to take Harry down a peg, but it becomes clear that Mooney may have more on his mind than just scaring Harry.