Gallows humour

It begins with a sketch. We’re in a prison in 1963 where Harry Wade, the UK’s second most famous hangman, is overseeing the execution of a killer who protests his innocence. The well-built convict effortlessly shrugs aside two burly but incompetent prison officers. ‘I’m being hanged by nincompoops,’ he laments. One of them helpfully points out that if he’d followed his instructions he’d ‘be dead by now’. Do these arch quips make you quiver with mirth? If so you’ll enjoy Hangmen, a slapstick comedy thriller by Martin McDonagh.

The scene shifts to Oldham in 1965. Capital punishment has been abolished and the retired Wade has taken over a pub in his hometown where he enjoys the status of a minor celebrity. Unsurprisingly for a professional slaughterman, Wade is a mountain of bullying insecurity who loves to humiliate those closest to him. He harries his slinky wife, his chubby teenage daughter and his all-male team of regular boozers who keep his tavern in business. This chorus line of alcoholics exchange the sort of aimlessly silly dialogue pioneered by Pinter. When a flash southerner named Mooney barges in and starts to ingratiate himself with Wade’s family the sluggish plot starts to take shape. Mooney is a criminal maniac who plans to abduct and perhaps to kill Wade’s daughter.

The performances, especially from Johnny Flynn as Mooney and Andy Nyman as Wade’s deputy Syd, are quirky, absorbing and often very funny. McDonagh’s vicious, caustic dialogue sparkles like broken flints. ‘Babycham man’ (to mean gay) has an authentic ring to it, but it may well be the author’s invention. Elsewhere a few anachronisms creep in. Hearing characters in 1965 say ‘combo’, ‘teen’ and ‘back in the day’ is like seeing Lady Macbeth telling her husband to ‘pop the knives in the dishwasher’.