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“Hangmen” has been saved from the executioner.
The darkish comedy, by the British playwright Martin McDonagh, will open on Broadway this spring, two years after the manufacturing was canceled by its producer because the coronavirus pandemic pressured theaters to shut.
The resurrected manufacturing, about an English hangman in the mean time Britain banned capital punishment, will now star Alfie Allen, who performed Theon Greyjoy on “Sport of Thrones,” as a mysterious customer to a bar run by the hangman. The hangman might be performed by David Threlfall, a Tony nominee for “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.”
The play is now scheduled to start previews on April 8 and to open on April 21 on the Golden Theater.
In 2020, “Hangmen,” with a barely completely different forged, had accomplished its thirteenth preview efficiency, additionally on the Golden, and was per week away from opening when Broadway theaters closed.
Eight days into the shutdown, producers introduced that they have been canceling the manufacturing, saying, “We wouldn’t have the financial assets to have the ability to proceed to pay the theater house owners, forged and crew by means of this nonetheless undefined closure interval.” The present was the primary, and one of many few, to make such a transfer.
“I’m not saying I had any knowledge, however when individuals have been saying we’d be again open in 4 weeks, I by no means believed that,” the lead producer, Robert Fox, mentioned this week. “We have been nonetheless being charged lease, and all types of bills we didn’t have the cash to cowl. I assumed that was the top of ‘Hangmen’ on Broadway.”
However the play was given new life by the U.S. authorities: It was awarded a $5.2 million Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, and was then granted an extension for its use of that cash till June 30, 2022. Fox mentioned {that a} mixture of the federal help, and traders returning cash they’d obtained from an insurance coverage declare, “meant we had sufficient to place the present on, and hopefully to have the ability to help it in its early days, if it wants help.”
A lot needed to be rethought: Over the last two years, one of many play’s producers, Elizabeth I. McCann, died; a number of of the play’s lead actors turned unavailable for private or skilled causes; and the set was dismantled. However Fox mentioned he wished to attempt once more, largely due to his fondness for the work of McDonagh, a four-time Tony nominee whose different performs embrace “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and whose movies embrace “Three Billboards Exterior Ebbing, Missouri.”
“I’m an enormous Martin fan — I believe he’s a real authentic, and an excellent author, and that is the third play of Martin’s I’ll have produced on Broadway,” Fox mentioned. “I don’t assume anyone’s placing it again on as a result of they assume they’re going to make some huge cash, however they consider it’s an exquisite play of Martin’s, and hopefully individuals need to see a darkish thriller comedy and luxuriate in themselves.”
“Hangmen” started its life in London, on the Royal Courtroom Theater, after which, following a West Finish run, had an Off Broadway manufacturing on the Atlantic Theater Firm, the place The New York Instances critic Ben Brantley referred to as it “criminally pleasurable.” Matthew Dunster has directed every manufacturing, and can achieve this once more on Broadway; the Broadway manufacturing will characteristic Tracie Bennett (“Finish of the Rainbow”) because the hangman’s spouse.
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Supply- nytimes