HANG ON TO YOUR SEATS

Gallows humor meets murder and mystery in
Martin McDonagh’s wicked comedy

I saw this play on Broadway and it rocked my world! Fun, intrigue, mystery and some jolts that only Martin McDonagh can provide. So I’m particularly excited that Long Beach Playhouse is bringing McDonagh’s Hangmen to its intimate Studio Theatre, opening August 29. This is vintage McDonagh: wickedly funny, increasingly unsettling and constructed so craftily that you may not realize just how tightly the noose is being drawn until it’s already around your neck.

The play opens in 1963, with British executioner Harry Wade doing what British executioners do: hanging a man who goes to his death proclaiming his innocence and cursing Harry. Two years later, capital punishment has been abolished, leaving Harry—who has the dubious distinction of being England’s second-best hangman—without his livelihood and, perhaps more importantly, without the identity that came with it.

Most of the action takes place in Harry’s pub, where family, cronies, reporters, a disgruntled assistant hangman and a mysterious stranger converge. And then there’s the matter of England’s best hangman. From there, I’m keeping my mouth shut. McDonagh is a master at putting seemingly ordinary people in a room, tightening the screws and letting humor, menace and moral uncertainty do the rest. The laughs come easily—until suddenly they don’t.

Amanda Karr as Alice, Trevor Hart as Mooney, Noah Wagner as Harry

Carl daSilva, who directed the Playhouse’s wonderful 2024 production of McDonagh’s The Pillowman, returns to helm Hangmen. He sees something underneath all that deliciously nasty comedy that makes the play particularly resonant now: Who gets to decide guilt? How much faith should we place in systems run by fallible human beings? And what happens to a man whose entire identity disappears when the institution that gave him power ceases to exist?

The 11-member cast includes returning Long Beach Playhouse performers Noah Wagner, Trevor Hart, Karl Schott, Amanda Karr, Allen Sewell, Floyd Harden, James Rice and James Matthis, along with Playhouse newcomers Dina Hagler, Kolby King and Ari Hagler.

If you’ve never seen Hangmen, don’t read the plot online. Seriously. Let McDonagh do his thing. I envy anyone walking into Harry’s pub for the first time without knowing what’s coming.

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Hangmen
Long Beach Playhouse
Studio Theatre, Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St. in Long Beach
Fri–Sat at 8; Sun at 2
August 29–September 26, 2026
for tickets ($20–$32), call 562.494.1014 or visit Long Beach Playhouse

for more shows, visit Theatre in LA

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