Hangmen, the sensation of the Royal Court, is coming to a live screening near you.
Hangmen
by Harry Dobermann 
A sharp haze hangs over the set of Hangmen,redolent of 1980’s nightclubs but visibly suggestive of 1960’s Britain, wreathed in a smog of cigarette smoke and winter mists. Set in a Lancashire pub run by Britain’s last Hangman, Martin McDonagh’s play shares the unpredictable black humour of his film ‘In Bruges’.
David Morrissey dominates the play as Harry, a preening braggart for whom the abolition of hanging means he will never be able to surpass the record racked up by his predecessor Albert Pierrepoint (John Hodgkinson). To Harry, the hangings are scores on the board, similar to the record of a cricket player, although as he tells a reporter the mass hangings of Nazi war criminals at Nuremberg gave Pierrepoint an unfair advantage and his record really should have been handicapped.
Simon Rouse, David Morrissey and James Dryden
Into this world comes Mooney (Johnny Flynn), a camp southerner (‘A Babycham man”, as one of Harry’s acolytes Inspector Fry (Craig Parkinson) calls him) who quickly unbalances Harry’s spit and sawdust kingdom. Chatting up Harry's 15 year old daughter (Bronwyn James) he entices her away from the pub and then taunts Harry and his wife Alice (Sally Rogers) with the prospect of her murder.
After a sell-out debut at the Royal Court Theatre in September 11 2015 , Hangmen transferred to Wyndham’s Theatre in December. The Charing Cross Road setting, until recently home to so many booksellers, is particularly appropriate. Not just because of the inventive and challenging nature of the writing, but also because it recalls that particularly British fascination with true crime and the mechanics of execution. Anna Fleischle’s ingenious sets are like a trip to Madam Tussaud’s, meticulously recreating the detail of a Victorian pub – all brass and dark wood – or the stark brick and fluorescent-lighting of a condemned cell.