The Hanging Man

After a serious friday night out lasting well into the small hours of the evening, what better thing to do on a Saturday, than a casual outing to the theatre. The play in question was “The Hanging Man” at The Lyric theatre in Hammersmith. Being in Hammersmith, the evening had to start out with a drink & meal at The Dove, which for a sunny Saturday evening, was surprisingly quiet.
Go figure.

As hinted to by the title, the plot revolves around an Architect who decides to hang himself after the realisation that the cathedral he’s building is destined to be a failure. And so the entertainment begins….you see he strings up the noose, puts it round his neck, kicks away the chair….and nothing…he just can’t die. It turns out that Death (a ~4’6″ woman!) is a little put out by how people take her for granted & wants to get to know him before taking him on to the afterlife. So put out is Death, that she stops taking people altogether.

At first this may seem like bliss – everlasting lasting life & all that. By it soon becomes clear that life without death is meaningless. A french general sums it up, half the soldiers hurl themselves into the most ridiculous battles knowing they can’t die, the other half refuse to fight for fear of being maimed & having to live with it for all eternity.

Enough of the plot. Perhaps even more impressive than the laugh out loud performance, was the quality of the stage design. The main stage was slanted at a 20 degree angle towards the audience, giving a slightly peturbing feel to the set. Numerous trap doors in the floor were used to their full comic potential. And lets not forget the poor actor hanging by the neck (well from a harness, thank god) for the duration of the performance.

Its playing for a couple more weeks yet, so there is still time to pay it a visit. It’ll be one of the more amuzing performances you’ll see this year.