The Hanging Man - Press Reviews

There is never anything ordinary about Improbable . But now its very success at surprising audiences is beginning to dog the company. Following the triumph of SHOCKHEADED PETER, its new show, THE HANGING MAN, is about the strain of living up to a past triumph. Fable and fact, the modern and the medieval, combine in this reverberating tale of an architect who, transfixed with the idea of future failure after building a beautiful cathedral, decides to hang himself. It turns out that he can't even get that right. Death, in the four-foot-high, quizzical shape of Lisa Hammond comes to interview him, and doesn't want to take him on: he's been taking her co-operation in his suicide for granted. So he survives, suspended. Throughout the action, Richard Katz, dangling like a baby in a badly functioning bouncer, twirls glumly from his noose, while his rope creaks noisily. As the hanging man becomes an icon, going in for a bit of healing and a bit of spoon-bending, the show turns into a meditation on what the world would be like without death (not better is the answer). But it is also, like all Improbable shows, about the business of putting on an Improbable show. Everything is made and dismantled before your eyes. In the shell of an unfinished church - a beautiful arrangement of duskily lit, copper-coloured arches - six Pulcinellas, looking like chefs in their identical cream tunics and stovepipe hats, amble towards the audience, then take off their hook-nosed masks to explain themselves. In the course of the evening, the stage takes on the appearance of a child's pop-up book: the ground opens to suck ranters down; it pushes Lisa Hammond up, high above the action, so that she perches, it seems, on a shelf of air, rather like Improbable.

To adapt TS Eliot, Improbable is a company much possessed by death, and sees the skull beneath the skin. Splendidly weird: THE HANGING MAN Two of its artistic directors, Phelim McDermott and Julian Crouch, collaborated with the Tiger Lillies on that unlikely West End hit SHOCKHEADED PETER, inspired by Heinrich Hoffmann's cautionary tales in which young children come to exceptionally grisly ends. Nicholas Hytner has already signed up Improbable for the National Theatre, to devise a stage version of the cult movie THEATRE OF BLOOD, in which a Shakespearean actor ingeniously sets about murdering the critics who have ridiculed his work (ouch!). And death also stalks its latest piece, THE HANGING MAN, one of the most inventive, idiosyncratic and atmospheric shows I have seen all year. Improbable is famous for creating shows "by the seat of our pants". Five weeks into rehearsals for this one, directed, designed and written by McDermott, Crouch and Lee Simpson, and there still wasn't a script. Yet there is remarkably little sense of self-indulgence, and a genuinely startling theatrical vision. The action is all set in a half-built cathedral, delightfully evoked by a Heath-Robinsonish design that is all trap doors, ropes and pulleys, with a beautifully painted backcloth of the view from the bell tower. Here the cathedral's architect, Edward Braff, fearing that his work is mediocre, decides to hang himself. He puts the noose round his neck, jumps from a chair, and hangs suspended in mid-air. There is only one problem. He doesn't die. From this arresting beginning, Improbable weaves a story of strange and sometimes chilling ingenuity. The figure of Death appears, played by the tiny and beguiling actress Lisa Hammond, who can't be much more than 3ft 6ins tall. She is annoyed with the architect because he has decided to die on his own without consulting her. So she leaves him to swing in the breeze "until you get to know me some more". Richard Katz deserves a medal for his performance as Braff, spending most of the show hanging around with a rope round his neck. At one point, he actually gets down and explains to the audience just how uncomfortable it is, but for most of the show his gaunt face, wild eyes and sad voice brilliantly evoke the horror of a man enduring a living death. And each time he moves, the rope creaks. There is, however, a twist to his suffering. Because Death refuses to let him die, she isn't able to take anyone else. The mortally ill recover, battles become futile because the competing sides can't tell who has won, and, after beginning his long suspension as an object of fear, the hanging man becomes an icon. This mythic piece, blending the medieval and the modern, is staged with impressive flair. Characters emerge and disappear through trap doors, Death addresses the audience directly, warning that she will eventually come for us all, and the actors step out of their roles to describe their own dreams of dying. What might sound merely morbid is actually strangely beautiful. The passage in which the architect finally describes his innermost feeling to the ever attentive, oddly seductive figure of Death, is deeply affecting, as is the transcendent resolution, when the show's already impressive design becomes truly tremendous. Just occasionally the piece lapses into silliness. The mood is almost destroyed by a charade-like scene in which the cast jokingly mime different ways of dying, like contestants on “Give Us a Clue”. But for most of its 90 minutes this is a splendidly weird and wonderful show that brings its audience tantalisingly close to "the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns".

Architect Edward Braff is a careful man who has learned his craft well. He is not a man to overreach himself because he is not a man who can deal with failure. He would prefer to die than hear the jeers of people rejoicing at his downfall. So when he starts thinking that his latest project, the building of a new cathedral for a wealthy patron, has gone badly wrong and thinks he will be a laughing stock, he decides to kill himself. But Death - a small, bearded woman in a sharp suit - is having none of him, and Braff is left suspended between heaven and hell. Improbable's meditation on creativity, life, death and the whole damn thing is a typically eccentrically engaging piece of storytelling told with the kind of dash and flair that Braff himself lacks. This is a show that constantly proves that you have to take risks, you have to overreach yourself, if you are to be truly creative - even if that means turning up on stage in the wrong costume and risking everyone laughing at you. Like all Improbable shows, it is eclectic, tacky, gloriously messy, self-consciously theatrical and full of surprises, whether it is a sudden trapdoor descent or a collision of high and low culture. Here the intensely spiritual and meditative sits side by side with “The Exorcist" and disco glitter balls. Sometimes, it has the grave grace of a medieval painting; at others, the raucous levity of a TV game show. When Death goes on strike in protest at Braff's do-it-yourself approach to dying and suspends all operations, a world that pretends death doesn't happen becomes obsessed with mortality. The generals are particularly pissed off. They keep having battles but nobody dies, so they cannot tell who has won. As one complains bitterly: "The whole thing has become meaningless." That is, of course, partly the point. For what is life without death? What is work without aspiration? What is art if it does not attempt to touch the divine? The cast are so endearing and so completely lacking in caution that I could have eaten them up. I'm dying to see this again and again.

Whenever a hanging is shown on stage, there’s always a slight fear that a terrible accident might happen. That’s doubly relevant in Improbable’s new show, which begins with a failed suicide. One of the most inventive and lyrical of companies around, they cherish the frisson that comes from mistakes. It’s the stock in the trade of variety shows when the juggler drops a plate, or when the stand-up comedian pretends to collapse into giggles and the audience imagines that he has never fallen apart before. The trio of men behind Improbable – Phelim McDermott, Lee Simpson and Julian Crouch – just take it one step further, setting their actors adrift onstage. Part of the fascination of the company is the way that they mix elements of experimental theatre with stuff from the end of the pier, and achingly poignant moments with terrible fumbling. The story, as in so many of their shows, is about death- there’s even a figure of death in the tiny form of Lisa Hammond. An architect (Edward Braff) resolves to hang himself because he fears that the half finished cathedral he has designed is a failure. He puts the rope around his neck and kicks the chair away. Only Death isn’t yet ready to take him and there he hangs for most of the show- an artist in the state of paralysis. At first people are afraid, then delighted to discover that this failure to die is catching then appalled to realise that without death life has no meaning. The night I went, the show sprang to life when Lisa Hammond’s translator hilariously tried to keep pace with Catherine Marmier’s General who bemoans the fact that victory in battle is impossible to discern without the casualties. Until then, the awkwardness had seemed frustrating rather than creative. I still don’t understand how, out of such chaos, the actors can create moments of such tender meaning. But they do. Improbable maybe, but unforgettable too.