Jeffrey Sweet–Making the Scene

Once in a blue moon, I have a strong sense of what a playwright was thinking when they wrote a text. I may well be wrong, of course. But, as I was watching Hold Onto Me Darling (my fingers itch to put in the missing comma), I fancied I could hear Kenneth Lonergan in the background muttering to himself. “OK, this is fun. Where should I take this next? Oh, why did I write that line? That’s interesting. Maybe I should follow the implication of that into this other room. Oh, look what’s in this room! Maybe there’s a scene in who’s in the corner. Now, why is she’s doing that?”

It doesn’t feel like a play Lonergan undertook with much of a plan of where he wanted to go. Rather it feels as if he started with a character — a popular country-western singer named Strings McCrane, in crisis in the wake of the death of his mother. Strings is given to much ad hoc philosophizing and protestations of deep sensitivity. He wants to con others (and himself) into thinking that he makes his moves out of the considered parsing of the ethical choices he confronts. He’s full of shit, of course. Time and again and he goes exactly where his appetite takes him, tossing philosophical garnish on top of his appalling behavior. And he expects those around him to believe him. And, since he has money and celebrity, they do, or pretend to. The stage has a tendency to move toward the truth, so introducing an exuberant liar at the top sets up a lot of potential for revelation. Adam Driver, as Strings, is clearly having a great time playing this mealy-mouthed fraud. And most of the audience seems to be having fun, too.

Lonergan seems to have followed Strings from one compromising situation to another, like the little guy in the credits of a Mr. Peabody cartoon at the end of the parade, cleaning up horse droppings.

But, as much fun as much of it is in the moment, at almost three hours it feels almost twice as long as it needs to be. McCrane behaves badly in the same way in scene after scene, so the play can’t help but get repetitive.

That said, I enjoyed most of it. Adam Driver commits fully to Strings’s pathology, and he’s always worth watching. And the supporting cast – including Heather Burns, Adele Clemons, C.J. Wilson and a hilariously credulous Keith Nobbs – give their all under Neil Pepe’s direction.

The best of Lonergan (The Waverly Gallery and the film Margaret) has made me eager to see anything that comes from his pen. Hold Onto Me Darling strikes me as being something he composed in a bemused frame-of-mind, largely for his own amusement. I was happy enough to spend an evening with it, but I look forward to a return to him in a more disciplined mode.