Hangmen is a 2015 play written by Martin McDonagh, carrying the same Black Humor of his cult films, In Bruges and Seven Psychopaths. The play premiered at London's Royal Court Theatre before transferring into the West End and starred David Morrissey, Reece Shearsmith and Johnny Flynn.
Set in the north of England in the 1963, just after the abolition of hanging, the play centres around former hangman Harry Wade (Morrissey), a stern Northerner with a professional and personal rivalry with fellow hangman Albert Pierrepoint. Now running a pub with his wife and daughter, Harry runs into his former assistant Syd (Shearsmith) whom Harry got fired for unprofessional behaviour, who warns him that he's met a stranger claiming to be responsible for committing several murders that bear an eerie resemblance to a series of murders that the two hanged a man for some years prior. Naturally, Harry becomes increasingly concerned with the news - not least because the stranger happens to be a charming young man, Mooney (Flynn) who has struck up a friendship with Harry's shy teenaged daughter Shirley. But not everything is as clear as it seems - Syd hired Mooney as part of a scheme to scare Harry as revenge for firing him; however, it's not long before Mooney causes events to spiral wildly out of Syd's control.
This show provides examples of:
- Ambiguous Situation: Almost everything about Mooney and the ending. Did Hennessy actually kill anyone? Or did Mooney actually commit the crime Hennessy was executed for? Did Mooney ever even meet Hennessy or was he making it up - he was definitely lying about having kidnapped Shirley, in the same conversation. And why did he seem to commit suicide-by-hangman? It certainly seems like he's guilty of something, but we never find out for sure.
- Attention Whore: Harry, though he likes to claim otherwise.
- Badass Boast: Harry is prone to giving these - whether they are strictly warranted or not is another matter. Mooney occasionally gives these as well, though in a much more subdued manner.
- Berserk Button: Harry's is any mention of Pierrepoint, a fact that's well-known and often exploited by the other characters.
- Mooney's appears to be people doing things behind his back if his reaction to Alice Wade trying to call his references is anything to go by.
- Shirley's is people calling her "mopey".
- Big Bad: Mooney
- Bittersweet Ending: Shirley returns to the pub alive and safe, but Mooney has been illegally hanged in front of several witnesses - none of whom are particularly fond of Harry by this point - and Harry himself is now something of a Broken Pedestal to his family and friends.
- Black Comedy: As is par for the course for Martin McDonagh...
- Blatant Lies: A variation: after creeping out Shirley by asking if sand goes into her swimsuit when she's at the beach, Mooney attempts to deflect the situation by claiming he "just likes sand"; she chooses to believe him.
- Book Ends: The play begins and ends with a hanging, and the scenes were deliberately written to mirror each other.
- Break the Cutie: Shirley, to some extent.
- Break the Haughty: Harry, particularly towards the end.
- Broken Pedestal: Harry is this by the end of the play to some extent.
- Butt-Monkey: Bill, one of the patrons of Harry's bar. Also Syd.
- Callback: As noted above, the scene of Mooney being hanged contains a few to the scene of Hennessey being hanged. These include both complaining of hurt wrists at the mention of their hands being tied, and both being hit by Harry to get them to stop resisting.
- The Chessmaster: Syd attempts to be this. Mooney actually is this.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Shirley's friend Phyllis has been committed to a mental home for supposedly being this (it's heavily implied she suffers some form of OCD). Shirley displays signs of this occasionally and Mooney seems to be this to the Northerners. He plays up to it a lot.
- Comedic Sociopathy: Mooney's sense of humour is probably best described as this.
- Comically Missing the Point: When Harry and Syd are trying to hang Hennessey, he's panicking over the fact that he's about to die. Syd tries various ways to calm him down, including telling him to relax and correcting his grammar. Lampshaded by Hennessey.Hennessey: Is he having a laugh? Are you having a laugh?! I'm about to die and you're correcting my English!!
- Mooney also tends to do this, especially whenever he's being questioned. Whether he's doing it on purpose or not is up to you.
- Crapsack World: It's subtle but still hinted at.
- Deliberate Values Dissonance: Mooney makes a few potentially racist remarks and no one really calls him out on it. It is set in the 60s, after all.
- Empathic Environment: The second half takes place during a rainstorm and it only gets worse as the situation does.
- Faux Affably Evil: Mooney is polite and charming but it doesn't really take much for him to become dangerous.
- Foreshadowing: Before he's hanged, Hennessey says that he will return to haunt Harry and Syd. When Mooney shows up a couple of years later, Hennessey's case is brought up again.
- Grey-and-Gray Morality: Enforced at the end. Mooney is a thoroughly unpleasant individual who (until it's revealed otherwise) is thought to be responsible for the kidnap and murder of Shirley - an idea he encourages and gloats about to her parents. However, Harry resorts to hanging him illegally as a means of torture and eventually kills him.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: Harry and Syd both fall victim to this, to varying degrees. Depending on whether Mooney intended to be hanged or not, this might also apply to him.
- Insistent Terminology: Shirley isn't "mopey"; she's just shy.
- Also, Mooney is just "menacing", not "creepy".
- It's All About Me: Harry.
- Large Ham: Both Harry and Mooney have their moments. Also Pierrepoint spends his five minutes onstage chewing as much of the scenery as he can.
- Karmic Death: Mooney - goading an (ex)professional hangman is not going to end well for you. It's also heavily implied that he was the one responsible for the deaths that Hennessey was hanged for.
- Maybe Magic, Maybe Mundane: Mooney himself. He appears after Hennessey has announced that he'll haunt Syd and Harry for hanging him, claims to have "picked out" Syd (rather than, as Syd assumes, it being the other way round) and, as noted above, his final scene contains several call-backs to Hennessey's hanging.
- Mood Whiplash: The play opens with an almost farcical scene of a prisoner begging not to be hanged and claiming he's innocent while the hangmen attempt to reason with him and get him to relax. Then they succeed in hanging him.
- Also at the end. Pierrepoint's arrived at Harry's pub to have a go at him while he and his patrons are attempting to hide the fact they've got Mooney on a chair with a tightened noose around his neck. Then the chair falls over.
- Murder by Mistake: It's left ambiguous whether Mooney deliberately kicked his chair away at the end or whether it just fell over.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Pretty much everyone's attitude towards Harry at the end.
- "Not So Different" Remark: Mooney deliberately uses this as a tactic to get close to Shirley. He also pulls this on Syd, although that one is much more sincere.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Mooney is generally very soft-spoken, philosophical and polite. When he's angry, he's the exact opposite.
- Invoked with Shirley. Her parents only really become worried when they realise how long she's been gone.
- Oh, Crap!: Syd when he realises things are getting out of hand.
- Harry when Pierrepoint shows up at his pub.
- Everyone at the end when the chair falls over.
-
One-Scene Wonder: Albert Pierrepoint makes a big entrance near the end, utterly demolishes Harry's smug sense of vanity, demands everyone smell his hair and then strides out again. - Only Sane Man: Inspector Fry has shades of this.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Mooney is particularly fond of handing these out to people. He even manages to give a posthumous one to Hennessey.Mooney: It's at times like this that I ask myself "what would Hennessey do?" and the answer to that is always something stupid that would get me executed, so I don't do that, I do the opposite.
- Running Away to Cry: Shirley attempts this early on.
- Sadist: Mooney definitely shows hints of being this.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Invoked by Mooney when things start going wrong. Averted in that he decides to stick around anyway.Mooney: Do I walk back into that pub like I own the place just for a laugh? Do I go back to the garage? Or do I say balls to all this and go back to London and civilisation?
- The Sociopath: Again, Mooney definitely shows signs of this. Harry and Syd aren't too far behind either.
- Token Good Teammate: Whether it's "good" or not is a matter of personal opinion, but Inspector Fry is really reluctant to go along with Harry's idea of hanging Mooney.
- The Trickster: Mooney. Syd wishes to see himself as this, but he does a pretty poor job.
- Wide-Eyed Idealist: Shirley certainly begins the play as one.
