NEW YORK — Mostly taking place in grim prisons, the last executions in the United Kingdom were by hanging. They lasted until a final suspension of the practice in 1965 (yes, as recently as that), thus ending the career of professional hangmen like Alfred Pierrepont, who is said to have executed some 500 condemned souls before retiring to run a pub in Lancashire, spending his later years pulling pints rather than breaking necks.
Pierrepont, who really existed and even wrote a memoir, was the inspiration for the deliciously gripping Martin McDonagh thriller, “Hangmen,” which kept Broadway hanging for two years after the COVID-19 closure scuppered its planned New York bow in the spring of 2020. The creepy show, a walloping hit in cynical London, kept its collective body on ice and now is swinging for attention in this crowded spate of spring openings. It opened last week at the John Golden Theatre.
It’s a fabulous offering — a throwback, really, to the heyday of juicy, creepy London imports by McDonagh (”Pillowman”), Conor McPherson (”Shining City”) and Mark Ravenhill (”Jerusalem”). Meticulously directed by Matthew Dunster and designed within an inch of its life by the brilliant Anna Fleischle, it offers up dextrous plotting, sardonic satire, subtle observations about the gray northern life and, above all, an unforgettable central character in Harry, a hangman who also loses his job and who also decides to run a pub in Oldham, Lancashire.
