Adam Driver, looking like a mountain of muscle, is returning to the stage in Hold on to Me Darling, a revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s forceful but too long 2016 play. He’s 39-year-old Strings (born Clarence) McCrane, a country music icon and movie star on leave from his latest film.
Despite all the encomia, Strings is country miles from being a satisfied man. He’s a prime example of success, fame, and money unable to buy a guy even a day’s happiness. He’s first seen in a luxury Kansas City hotel suite, mourning the death of his mother, who by all accounts convinced him he’d let her down on all expectations she had of his life. She may not be the positive force Strings believes she’s been—or wants to believe she’s been.
The bereft celebrity, psychologically down to his last frayed string, is so disoriented that he’s decided to quit his thriving career—he’s worth a few hundred million—to return to his completely obscure Beaumont, Tennessee birthplace and toil as a clerk at Ernie’s feed store. There, he expects to find rewards supplying locals with food for cattle, cats or whatever animals they’re raising. In time, he does alter that demeaning stratum, deciding he’d be better off running the modest place with his Beaumont-anchored, practical stepbrother Duke (CJ Wilson).
[Read Michael Sommers’ ★★★★☆ review here.]
In Hold on to Me Darling Lonergan creates a protagonist at a loss as to who he is, spending nearly three hours remaining befuddled in a work that, as it motors along, doesn’t seem to know how to ease out of a repetitive plot dilemma. It’s an eight-scene drama, often peppered with genuine humor, that holds on to tense interest for maybe five of the scenes—and luckily the final one. For the remainder of its attenuated minutes, it merely tests audience goodwill.
Attending to the unstrung Strings when he’s first seen—so disturbed, he can’t strum more that few notes on his guitar—is Jimmy (Keith Nobbs), as devoted an aide as they come. Almost immediately Nancy (Heather Burns), a masseuse and devoted Strings McCrane fan, arrives with her portable folding table. A modest woman, raising two young girls in an unhappy marriage, Nancy has the added gift of massaging the spirit as well as the body. So quickly does she put Strings at physical and mental ease that he thinks she’s the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life.
That’s until he meets second cousin, twice removed Essie (Adelaide Clemens) at the funeral parlor. Actually, he re-meets her and discovers she’s all grown up and now the woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life. That’s until he’s back with Nancy and decides he wants to spend the rest of his life with her, married. That’s until he meets Essie yet again. And Nancy’s having none of it, as Lonergan also can’t decide, depending on the shifting demands of whatever scene Nancy’s in, whether she’s a conciliatory figure or vengeful.
Yup, Strings and Lonergan are both unsure of themselves as to finding their separate paths through Hold on to Me Darling. And that’s until the final scene, when the playwright regains control and inserts the message he’s out (consciously or unconsciously?) to deliver.
(Warning: something of a spoiler coming.) Raised by his mother in a fatherless household, Strings has had little of his father’s reason for leaving explained to him. Now, Mitch (Frank Wood), a humble man, has been located by tenaciously loyal Jimmy and brought to the feed store for a reunion with his determinedly estranged son.
It’s a touching sequence during which Lonergan suggests that a son raised in a fatherless home—especially by a domineering mother—has obviously lacked a beneficial father-son relationship. A powerful, hardly questionable observation, yet a statement some spectators may consider a weak, last-minute tactic to end the play satisfyingly.
Hold on to Me Darling packs compensatory power elsewhere throughout. Under Tyler Micoleau’s sensitive lights and with David Van Tieghem’s enhancing sound and music design (the occasional country gal singer piped in), Walt Spangler provides seven revolving sets for the eight scenes. Each room is perfectly tuned to the location, the last being a well-supplied feed store Strings and Duke should be proud to operate.
Under director Neil Pepe’s confident grip (he’s returning to the revival task), the six-member ensemble is pitch-perfect. Driver handles Strings’ driven disorientation with emotional variety. Tall as a feed store sign, he looms over the man’s vicissitudes even when Lonergan doesn’t. Nobbs cleverly rides Jimmy’s possibly disguised more-than-best-friend interests.
Burns meets the demands of Nancy’s changing character traits forthrightly. Wood, prancing only a few months back in The Best We Could, is movingly memorable as a man who comes with hat in hand. Wilson and Clemens, repeating their roles from the previous production, leave no expressive stone unturned.
By the way, it’s always a pleasure when a movie box-office name comes back to the boards, especially off-Broadway. During the action, Strings has rules about when he will or won’t sign autographs. The crowd waiting at this stage door—not a common off-B’way sight—clearly hope Driver won’t be so stingy.
Hold on to Me Darling opened October 16, 2024, at the Lucille Lortel Theatre and runs through December 22. Tickets and information: holdontomedarling.com
