Stars, they’re not just like you and me. Adam Driver proves the point in Kenneth Lonergan’s comedic character study Hold on to Me Darling, which opened Wednesday at Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theatre. Driver, movie-star buff despite a tall and lanky frame that recalls Snoopy’s cowboy-hat-wearing brother Spike from the Peanuts comics, plays a hyper-narcissistic country music star who’s transitioned into big-screen sci-fi action hero with all the self-awareness of a guppy. He’s the sort of fellow who wears a black cowboy hat indoors, smashes his guitar at the slightest hint of frustration, and receives calls from the president (on Air Force One) offering condolences on the passing of his mother.
But Mama’s death seems to have stirred an alien impulse toward reflection in the memorably monikered Strings McCrane, a need to process the death of a woman whose approval he craved but never managed to earn. Maybe that’s become she’s the one woman who seems to have utterly resisted his charms and instead upbraided him for refusing to settle down with a wife and family even when he’s on the cusp of 40. Strings seems to be irresistible to other women — both famous folks like Janet Jackson, we learn, as well as civilians like the two women he met in a bar the previous night who send him their porn videos the following day. Not even grief over his mama dampens his libido. Before long, he’s chasing both a ruthlessly gold-digging masseuse, Nancy (Heather Burns), as well as a good-natured distant cousin, Essie (Adelaide Clemens), who offers a glimpse of the settled-down domestic life his mama wished for him.
Needless to say, Strings eventually learns that he isn’t the settling-down type. He also turns out to be far more easily manipulated than you’d imagine despite the hovering presence of his long-time personal assistant, Jimmy (played with irresistible puppy-dog sycophancy by Keith Nobbs), and a half-brother (CJ Wilson) with whom he has a prickly relationship exacerbated by the Tennessee-valley-wide divide in their financial situations. “I just don’t know how you’ve managed in the world the way you have, you’re so given to impulsive statements,” Essie tells him at one point. And indeed, it’s a wonder that he hasn’t cycled through a tour bus full of ex-wives and alimony payments and lawsuits for broken contracts.
But for Strings, vulnerability, like introspection, is a mere costume to be worn until the director yells “Cut.” Driver makes a striking impression in the role, deploying a laconic drawl while holding his lanky frame as if slouching would be an unthinkable compromise he couldn’t bare to countenance. He nails the character’s superficiality while also suggesting a hint of vulnerability buried beneath a mountain of bluster and casual indifference to the concerns of others.
Hold on to Me Darling is a shaggy-dog story that sags over the course of its nearly three-hour running time, though director Neil Pepe keeps the individual scenes flowing smoothly (thanks in part to Walt Spangler’s versatile turntable set design, well lit by Tyler Micoleau). There’s a rushed quality to all the reversals and double-reversals in the play’s final scenes, which are set mostly in a rural feed store that Strings has short-sightedly decided should be his new calling. After the leisurely pace of the first two hours, suddenly Lonergan feels an impulse to tie up every possible loose end, and even introduces a new character who’s barely gotten a mention before: the long-estranged father (Frank Wood) whom Strings hasn’t seen in three decades.
But you don’t come to a Lonergan play for tight plotting. One of the chief pleasures of Hold on to Me Darling is the playwright’s gift for witty turns of phrase, here delivered with rat-a-tat gusto and confidence. Some of the biggest punchlines emerge from situations that are, strictly speaking, no laughing matter — such as Strings’s genuine shock and sadness at learning that his cousin lost both her father and her husband at the same time. “Well, they were drag racin’,” Clemens’s Essie explains, with a deadpan guilelessness that draws big guffaws without robbing her of agency.
To his credit, even Lonergan’s dimmest bulbs still manage to hold their own. And even seemingly unlikable characters, like self-absorbed country stars, retain a recognizable humanity. (Of course, it helps when they’re played by a movie star.)
HOLD ON TO ME DARLING
Lucille Lortel Theatre, Off Broadway
Running time: 2 hours, 45 minutes (1 intermission)
Tickets on sale through Dec. 22
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