‘hang’ @ Second Thought Theatre
Photos by Evan Michael Woods
—Martha Heimberg
The terrible weight of bureaucracy on the human nervous system becomes almost as excruciating for the audience as for the poor woman dealing with official “protocol” in British playwright debbie tucker green’s hang, onstage at Second Thought Theatre through November 2.
Directed by Sasha Maya Ada with explosive concentration, the 90-minute play gives voice to people caught up in a justice system too mechanical to encompass the flesh and blood human suffering it was designed to alleviate.
Two brightly smiling white women in business attire, referred to in the program as simply One (Shannon J. McGrann) and Two (Kristen Lazarchick), scurry around an office break room furnished with a table, folding chairs and a watercooler in Mya C. Cockrell’s functional set design. Right away, the two begin their friendly chit-chat with a tired-looking Black woman, called Three (M. Denise Lee). They ask if she came alone, and if she would like some water. “I’ve been here before. I know how this works,” Three tells them, flatly.
The smiles and chatter continue, and we share Three’s growing frustration, as she begs the officials to please tell her what the “development” they keep referring to is about. One and Two nervously talk of their lives and babble about the crummy plastic cups they have to drink from, while never coming clean about what they actually have to tell Three.
We’re halfway through the play before we figure out that Three is the victim of a crime, and that One and Two have the wretchedly unpleasant job of updating her on the case. As more details are pried out, we become even more incensed by the cryptic proceedings.
Playwright green’s delay of information does create tension in itself, but the impact of her play is less about how the backstory is revealed, and more about how she uses a criminal investigation to lay bare the indignities suffered by victims in the name of serving some kind of abstract justice. The device opens the stage to the tight, powerful ensemble performance of the three actors, who laugh and cry and shiver and shudder as they bring their assigned-number characters to vibrant life. Cresent R. Haynes’ sound design features city noises that rise and fall with new information, and Roma Flowers’ lighting design is nuanced and telling.
Lee’s Three, staring straight at the jumpy, solicitous white women, tells them their constant talk of “developments” deeply harms her and her family, and just makes the terrible experience fresh again. As Lee recalls her life before the crime, she speaks honestly and powerfully of a time before it happened. Her body at first trembles to match her faint voice. Then she gathers her arms around her and speaks as a woman of strength and courage in the face of this official nightmare.
Characters One and Two in this grueling investigation are also clearly upset by the decision they must finally ask Three to make. McGrann’s forced smile and jaunty talk about her ex-husband feels sit-com ridiculous, and Lazarchick’s big-eyed distress as she runs out of the room would be comic if the stakes were not so grim. Perhaps even two experienced officials with noted “academic training” cannot escape such lunacy unharmed.
The tension grows as the particulars of criminal execution enter the discussion, and by the time the play is over, we feel to the bone the sad plight of actors in the grip of a cold system lacking all human feeling.
In a season packed with spooky horror films and plays, hang definitely offers an evening’s worth of chills.
WHEN: October 19-November 2, 2024
WHERE: Bryant Hall/Kalita Humphreys campus, 3400 Blackburn, Dallas
WEB: secondthoughttheatre.com
