Adam Driver (right) is country and western star Strings McCrane, who meets Nancy (Heather Burns), a hotel masseuse, shortly after his mother dies, in a revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s 2016 play Hold On to Me Darling.
The price of fame is at the heart of Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold On to Me Darling, a 2016 play that premiered at the Atlantic Theater Company, directed by Neil Pepe. In Pepe’s superbly cast revival, Adam Driver now plays the main character, Strings McCrane, a renowned but feckless country and western singer who enjoys casual romantic relationships but wants more.
Strings goes home to Tennessee for his mother’s funeral, where he reunites with his brother Duke (C. J. Wilson).
The problems of balancing the demands of fame and/or fortune with a satisfying personal life are nothing new. Philip Barry’s play Holiday (1928) addressed the same question. So have movies from A Star Is Born to Roman Holiday to Raging Bull, and TV series like Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age—though in the last cases with more emphasis on the luxurious lifestyles than on the struggle of choosing. Lonergan puts a distinctly humorous spin on the tension: Strings is a man-boy with a mommy complex, and Driver brings bewilderment, irascibility, and vulnerability to the big lug that are engaging rather than off-putting. He also seizes the opportunity to show an unexpected flair for comedy.
Abandoned by his father and raised by his adored mother, who has died hours earlier, Strings is prickly, to put it mildly. He demands that his personal assistant Jimmy (Keith Nobbs) hunt down his long-estranged father and bring him to the funeral. The loyal Jimmy also tries to show initiative by bringing Strings porn, but the hapless assistant has misjudged the gesture:
Strings: Now what the hell you think my Mama would say if she was to know I was settin’ up in this Goddamn hotel on the day of her death, watchin’ pornographic movies on your Goddamn phone?
Jimmy: Thought it might cheer you up, is all. It’s them two gals you was talkin’ to last night. They just sent it in.
When Strings settles on a massage instead, his masseuse, Nancy (Heather Burns), turns out to be a fan: “I have all your songs and I’ve seen every one of your movies. And I can’t listen to ‘Hold On to Me Darlin’’ without cryin’.”
Strings soon becomes attracted to Nancy, who lets slip that her marriage isn’t a happy one, and Lonergan’s writing is especially funny as Strings explains his own feelings, until he can’t:
That’s how I feel right now with you. Like this tragedy has stripped me raw, and I’m standin’ before a new sky, naked as a newborn baby. … And there’s a wind blowin’, Nancy. … It’s a cold, bitter wind and it’s cuttin’ right through me—cuttin’ right inside me, churning up my insides like somebody stuck a—a—stuck some kind of very sharp implement inside my guts and started yankin’ it around.
Others who come into Strings’s orbit include his cousin Essie (Adelaide Clemens), who has grown from the child he remembers into a lovely woman. Essie speaks frankly about Strings’s mother: “Why, the way she used to talk about some of the girls that you went out with really made my blood run cold sometimes, it really did.” But she also assures him that his mother “had all your albums, and she knew all your songs by heart. … She was very protective. And even if she did it in her own way, she loved you very much.” The “in her own way” deftly reveals Strings’s misplaced adoration. It’s echoed later after Strings comes in late from a talk with Essie, upsetting the manipulative Nancy:
Nancy: Look at what you’re doing. What do you think your Mama would say about you now?
Strings: Somethin’ mean.
Strings is quite taken with his cousin Essie (Adelaide Clemens, left), much to Nancy’s chagrin. Photographs by Julieta Cervantes.
The horndog Strings, whose life has been a push-pull between his mother’s abuse and his reverence for her, is soon torn between Nancy, who is still married with children (Burns injects a shrewd ambivalence into the character), and the recently widowed Essie. Eventually Strings decides to abandon his performing career and buy a feed store to run with his brother Duke (C. J. Wilson).
Still, his closest companion is Jimmy. Nobbs, who has been a compelling stage presence for 25 years, as well as an eloquent defender of underpaid actors, layers his character with subtlety and boyish charm; he brightens the stage when he’s on it.
Thanks to Jimmy, the mercurial Strings ultimately gets his wish to meet his father (Frank Wood). Their final scene of ambiguous reconciliation affirms Lonergan’s play as a heartfelt tragicomedy.
Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold On to Me Darling plays at the Lucille Lortel Theatre (121 Christopher St.) through Dec. 22. Evening performances are at 7 p.m. Wednesday through Friday (there’s an added performance on Tuesday, Nov. 26; no performance Thanksgiving Day; and a 7:30 p.m. curtain the following night, Nov. 29); matinees are at 2 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. For tickets and more information, including a TodayTix lottery, visit holdontomedarling.com.
Playwright: Kenneth Lonergan
Direction: Neil Pepe
Scenic Design: Walt Spangler
Costume Design: Suttirat Larlarb & Lizzie Donelan
Lighting Design: Tyler Micoleau
Sound Design: David Van Tiegham
