‘Hangmen’ Review: A Killer Broadway Production of Martin McDonagh’s Lethal Black Comedy

variety.com:

Marilyn Stasio Theater CriticIn the theatrical annals of wild and wicked stage plays, there are black comedies, blacker comedies, and blacker-than-the-dead-of-night comedies like “Hangmen.“  Prolific playwright Martin McDonagh hasn’t written all of them, to be sure; but he’s created some of the best of this deadly lot, including “The Beauty Queen of Leenane,” “The Cripple of Inishmaan” and “The Pillowman,” not to mention such beautifully bleak films as “Seven Psychopaths,” “In Bruges” and “Three Billboards Outside of Ebbing, Missouri.”Still, there is something special about “Hangmen,” which, were it a song, would be the perfect little ditty to play as you were cutting your wrists.

Happily (if such a word would apply to any of his work), this Broadway production is a deadly beauty, flawlessly cast and directed in the mordant style of an executioner’s song by Matthew Dunster.

The introductory scene alone is enough to give anyone the fantods. Set in a prison cell, it depicts the emotionally excruciating horror of a condemned man being dragged off, kicking and screaming of his innocence, to his execution.

Flash forward a couple of weeks and we’re in a shabby British bar (the perfectly depressing vision of set designer Anna Fleischle, who also did the costumes) where a bunch of barflies are tossing down pints and cheerfully discussing the topic of criminal punishment.To be specific, these morbid chaps are arguing the relative merits of two rival hangmen, one of whom, Harry (the formidable David Threlfall), happens to own the pub.