If you see nothing else this season, call in favors and get tickets to this limited run Kenneth Lonergan play. Originally produced in 2016, the production’s axis turns on performance by Adam Driver so authentic one feels like a voyeur. Excellence of supporting cast and Neil Pepe’s extraordinary direction follow suit.
When country singer/songwriter Strings McCrane (Adam Driver) loses his mother, he goes into a tailspin. (Dad left the family early on.) White knuckling his way through loss is not an option. Haunted by her lifelong disapproval, he resolves to give up the life of a hedonistic superstar to become the man she wanted him to be, i.e. a decent, moral husband and father. Actresses and models were not candidates for domesticity. “They’re snakes in the grass. They just want your money,” she’d warned countless times.
Heather Burns (Nancy), Adam Driver (Strings)
At root, the artist is a nice southern boy, but fame gives charm and egotism considerable latitude.
He calls everyone darlin’ without offending and exudes respect, yet exploits circumstances regardless
of emotional consequences. What appears to be candid vulnerability has always been particularly appealing to women. Bravado is interpreted as defense. And yes, you’ve seen this before but rarely so nuanced.
Strings returns to Tennessee for the funeral abandoning: 1. a newsworthy fiancé who wore a
see-through mesh burka on a junket to Afghanistan in solidarity with women. 2. a space movie
3. a concert tour called “No Time for Tears.” Devoted toady Jimmy (Keith Nobbs, who mines
the role for backbone) tries to get “the boss” to schedule fulfilling commitments to no avail.
The men have a long term symbiotic bond.
Keith Nobbs (Jimmy)
Kenneth Lonergan is a terrific writer, not news to many of us. Known for complicated emotional and interpersonal dynamics, he excels here depicting what appears to be a straightforward situation with layered permutations. Characters reveal themselves slowly, often with unexpected attributes. (Strings’ stepbrother, for example, is immensely articulate about astronomy.) The play is unnecessarily long, but you won’t want to see the end of this cast, especially Driver.
In an effort to instill calm, Jimmy suggests a massage. Hotel masseuse Nancy has been besotted by Strings since trade school. (Heather Burns is credible as the increasingly silver-tongued, Machiavellian character) Seeing him shirtless confirms hunk status. She kneads her client (professionally) to an embarrassed erection. They talk. Nancy is an unhappily married mother of “two angels”; a country girl with seemingly traditional values. She’s also an opportunist, but then so is he.
Adam Driver (Strings), C.J. Wilson (Duke)
Half-brother, Duke (C.J. Wilson, grounded and just homey enough), a good old boy smarter than he appears but gullible to Strings, exemplifies both sides of family life. On the one hand, we hear wife and kids vociferously arguing, on the other, he’s secure and loved.
Would Duke go into business with him purchasing and running the local feed store? The local feed store? After a life of privilege and adoration? The artist ungraciously refers to having financially helped his sibling in the past, though clearly not to any life changing degree. (Cracks in façade pepper the play.) Strings is thinking of moving back home.
Adam Driver (Strings), Adelaide Clemens (Essie)
At the funeral, the hero encounters his cousin twice-removed, Essie (Adelaide Clemens in a beautifully understated performance.) Pale, blonde, soft spoken, and very pretty, she at once personifies the ideal
for which he thinks he’s looking. When Nancy arrives complaining about being left among strangers, possessively insisting she sit next to Strings, differences in the women are blatant. He’s a gentleman to both.
The play becomes a three-way fight for the hero’s soul, Nancy’s in the lead. Essie has more sense than to take on her formidable competition’s influence, but she’s present. Push-pull is clear. Strings naively puts everything on the line. Illusions crack. The third pull is, of course, show business, a vengeful mistress.
Frank Wood (Mitch, Strings’ father)
At the end of the piece, Jimmy turns up with Strings’ father, Mitch, whom he was asked to find and deliver early in the play. (Frank Wood with superb emotional shading.) To watch the delicate two-handed scene is a theatrical experience you won’t soon forget.
Neil Pepe directs as if conducting a symphony. Richness of character is so integral, we don’t see an outside hand. Timing is adept, movement bespoke.
Walt Spangler’s turntable seamlessly offers location after location detailed just as one might imagine it, from Duke’s guns, taxidermy, and beer sign to seed stores wares.
Costumes by Suttirat Larlarb and Lizzie Donelan show individual characters as they are.
Adam Driver may be this generation’s Brando. He doesn’t so much act as inhabit roles. Not a moment of falseness emerges. Even when the magnetic performer is silent and still, he draws attention with a hum of focused presence. Lonergan has written a terrific play, but without this kind of charisma as its lodestar, it wouldn’t be what it is in this production.
Photos by Julieta Cervantes
Hold On To Me Darling by Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by Neil Pepe
Lucille Lortell Theatre
121 Christopher Street
