at the flicks

Okay this wasn’t a film but the National Theatre production of Hangmen, the Martin McDonagh play beamed live to Cineworld theatres.  This was the first time I’d ever been to see a play at the cinema and I wasn’t disappointed.  The gruesome opening hanging scene had me worried for the actor as he disappeared through the trap door but I soon became immersed in the story.  Set for most part in a smoky Oldham pub on the day that hanging was abolished in 1965, we find the landlord is Britain’s ‘2nd best hangman’ Harry Wade, played by the excellent David Morrissey.  We were steeped in an atmosphere of casual racism, sexism and everything ism accurately depicting 1960’s Britain.   Almost everyone smoked, alcoholism wasn’t really a ‘thing’ and ‘simpletons’ were to be mocked – it wasn’t pretty era despite the rose coloured, backward glancing at Beatlemania and Twiggy.  In the midst of the bar room banter an interloper from the south arrives, the menacing Mooney, played adeptly by Johnny Flynn and things begin to get nasty.  There were some great one-liners and the competitive relationship between the more famous hangman, Albert Pierrepoint and Wade was unexpected and hilarious.  Bronwyn James was fabulous as Wade’s 15 year old daughter, Shirley, both vulnerable and fiesty.  Her relationship with her parents was a demonstration of last century parenting strategies with teenagers in trouble for being ‘moody’.    Sharp, intelligent writing which is sadly absent from some of the films I’ve seen recently.