Hangmen at The Royal Court (NT Live)

After 10 years, In Bruges writer and director returns to The Royal Court Theatre with Hangmen: the story of the last hangman in Britain.

Set in the 1960s up in country Durham the play focuses around hangman Harry on the day that hanging is abolished and the rabbit-hole he and his friends are drawn into with the arrival of a menacing stranger and, perhaps, some demons from the past.

Opening with an actual hanging the first noticeable trait of Hangmen is its wonderful period set design – the green-tinged cell walls and a single-fag dispensing machine in the pub. However, the first scene change is overly-long and messy, something, luckily that isn’t repeated. Despite the macabre nature of this opening, this is where McDonaugh (as those familiar with his writing may well know) does his best work – finding humour in the most potentially depressing situations and still managing to cut them off tersely, leaving weighty meaning hanging (excuse the phrase) palpably in the air.

The accents also do much for the comedy without requiring too much acclimatisation yet, a couple of “racial-jokes” even be them indicative of the times, hit an awkward note. It must be said that Hangmen is a very funny play – from a sort of verbal slapstick to McDonaugh’s characters typical rambling musings. David Morrissey puts in a solid, if 2d performance, and the ensemble are largegly fun bit-characters. Sally Rogers is good as the Mother-putting-on-a-brave-face after the first act cliff-hanger (no spoilers) and Johnny Flynn is very good (largely due to the writing, not to slight him) as the menacing outsider figure.

However, it must be said that with a very interesting subject matter and a story that really feels like it’s leading somewhere after the stasis of the middle-first act; Hangmen is largely about nothing, and says nothing. While enjoyable and you may not notice simply due to this fact – the comedy overtakes any real subject and sweeps into a second acct that descends into farce. Come the second acct McDonaugh suddenly realises he has neglected the word “fuck” (when the humour was doing perfectly well beforehand). Does a play always need to say something if it’s funny? (I think, arguably, yes).

Overall, Hangmen is enjoyable, well-acted but falls short of everything is could be and misses a trick by not expanding upon its controversial subject but rather using it simply as a scapegoat onto which McDonaugh attempts, failingly, to tack a pseudo-moralistic ending.