Not far into Kenneth Lonergan‘s fame-is-hell-but-what-isn’t fable Hold On To Me Darling, Adam Driver, enjoying a rustic music crossover megastar about to start filming his newest blockbuster, pledges in an accent so thick it may dent Johnny Cash’s belt buckle that he’s going to show his well-known life round “simply as quickly as I get performed with this goddamn area movie.”
The line, coming from Kylo Ren himself, will get fun, a sluggish construct kind of factor that picks up steam because the viewers makes the connection between the Driver on stage and the Driver of actual life. The actor doesn’t wink, and in reality tosses off the road with out a lot ado, however with a play as unwieldy as this one, finest to just accept fun the place you possibly can.
It’s not that Hold On To Me Darling – opening tonight Off Broadway on the Lucille Lortel Theatre – is dangerous (it isn’t, although there are moments that do their finest to persuade in any other case). Confounding is likely to be a extra correct description, beginning with this: In the eight years since its final Off Broadway manufacturing, directed, like this one, by Neil Pepe, how may the supremely gifted Lonergan (This Is Our Youth, The Waverly Gallery, Lobby Hero) not come to some resolution about what, precisely, this shaggy canine is meant to be about?
Cartoon? Satire? Tearjerker? Low-key sensible or deliberately dimwitted? Hold On To Me Darling presents previous couple of clues as to its intentions, so finest simply to concentrate to its floor: Driver performs Strings McCrane, the uncommon nation celebrity who has crossed over into main Hollywood success. At 39, he’s been an icon for thus lengthy that he can barely recall a time when the world hasn’t been stuffed with silver plates and the ladies who deliver them.
But because the play begins, Strings has simply discovered that his mom has died, and he’s thrown for a significant loop. We regularly study that she was a monster who belittled and withheld like to the purpose that even Strings, her favourite, is left with little by means of reminiscences however insults and disappointments.
It’s all excellent components for an existential midlife disaster, which Strings commences someplace between the Kansas City resort close to his newest movie shoot and the Tennessee backwater the place Ma McCrane’s funeral is to be held. Soon sufficient, String decides he’s going to dump the psycho starlet with whom he’s been making tabloid headlines, marry the starry-eyed, butter-wouldn’t-melt resort masseuse he’s simply met, and give up all of the star-making-machinery in favor of the small-town Tennessee life he way back fled. Life, he thinks, will likely be simpler.
Heather Burns, with Driver
Julieta Cervantes
Fat likelihood. That masseuse (the great Heather Burns, working off with the present hand in hand with Driver) has concepts of her personal (to not point out a husband and two “evil twin” daughters). Strings’ skilled Plan B – a feed retailer he’ll buy and function together with his no-luck half-brother Duke (CJ Wilson) – is the sort of crummy job solely somebody as pampered as Strings may romanticize, and strolling away from contracts and Hollywood commitments is a prospect solely a crew of attorneys may love.
Along the way in which, Strings does numerous speaking – tons and plenty of speaking, loquacious and hambone. Lonergan is aces in presenting characters who love to listen to themselves discuss, even when he’s a lot (a lot) extra convincing when the characters doing the yapping are of the urbane, citified selection that gasoline his New York-set masterpieces This Is Our Youth and The Waverly Gallery. The worst of Darling‘s Southern-fried disquisitions may disgrace Maggie The Cat and Big Daddy on their finest days. “There’s a wind blowin’, Nancy,” Strings laments. “I want I may say it was a heat wind. But it ain’t. It’s a chilly, bitter wind and it’s cuttin’ proper via me, cuttin’ proper inside me, churning up my insides like any individual caught a — a — caught some sort of very sharp implement inside my guts and began yankin’ it round, simply twistin’ it throughout inside my viscera, my innards.”
Played out on Walt Spangler’s crackerjack rotating set – a resort room one scene, and feed retailer one other, a deer-headed man cave one second, a funeral parlor the following – Darling has loads of advantageous moments, even advantageous scenes, although it doesn’t follow even its finest concepts for very lengthy. By the time Burns’ deliciously conniving masseuse Nancy lastly reveals her true colours, abandoning the passive-aggressive toadying that Strings encounters on a near-constant foundation, we all know higher than to get too hooked up.
And all that’s effectively earlier than the unearned sentimentality of the ending – which Driver comes rattling near pulling off on sheer will alone. Even if we want the play had adopted Burns’ Nancy to wherever it’s she went, it’s all however unattainable to not get taken in by that vulnerable-combustible persona that made Driver’s breakthrough on Girls so memorable.
Still, not even Driver, with all his depth, can compensate for the condescension that underscores a lot of Darling. Do Tennesseans actually go round calling one another Cousin This and Cousin That? Do exclamations like “Jesus Christ on the Tennessee State Fair!” and “Jesus Christ in a barbecue pit!” and “Jesus Christ in a downtown Memphis hair salon!” come tripping off their tongues? And in the event that they do, can “Kiss Mah Grits” be far behind?
After all of the Appalachian bons mot have been tossed and repetitive arguments laid to relaxation, we is likely to be pleased that Strings appears about to search out some kind of therapeutic however largely we’re simply left questioning how one thing with a lot hit potential can wind up as forgettable as any outdated B facet.
Title: Hold On To Me Darling
Venue: Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre
Written By: Kenneth Lonergan
Directed By: Neil Pepe
Cast: Adam Driver, Heather Burns, Adelaide Clemens, Keith Nobbs, CJ Wilson, Frank Wood
Running time: 2 hr 40 min (together with intermission)
Content Source: deadline.com