Adam Driver Finds The Comedy In HOLD ON TO ME DARLING — Review

Off-Broadway

Keith Nobbs & Adam Driver | Photo: Julieta Cervantes

By
Joey Sims
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October 30, 2024 3:45 PM
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Reviews

Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold On To Me Darling is a peculiar work—something closer to a ramble than a play. So it is perhaps fitting that Lonergan’s odd and meandering tale is now receiving an equally peculiar revival.  

I say peculiar because this off-Broadway staging of Darling, running through December 22 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, is a near-exact recreation of the play’s 2016 world premiere at Atlantic Theater Company. Neil Pepe again directs; design elements appear unchanged, mostly credited to the same team; and half the cast reprise their original roles. Even the wonderful Keith Nobbs, who quit acting right after closing Darling the first time, is right back on stage as though no time passed at all. 

So what is behind this odd little resurrection? Our raison d’etre is Tony Award nominee Adam Driver, taking over the meaty lead role of temperamental country music star Strings McCrane (memorably originated by Timothy Olyphant). It’s a decent rationale, given that Driver is quite possibly the greatest actor of his generation—if he wants to do a play, that’s a pretty solid reason to do it. 

And it’s easy to see the role’s appeal. Strings is a mess of contradictions, a vain manchild who is somehow also an intellectual heavyweight. He’s sweet, but often cruel; wise, yet deeply stupid. Driver tears into Lonergan’s typically crackling monologues, each one veering unpredictably from topic to topic, as profoundly inconstant as the man delivering them. Driver’s comic timing is flawless, while he wisely underplays the character’s more vulnerable moments. Olyphant leaned most heavily into Strings’ childlike nature, but Driver finds equal fun in the contradictions of his philosophical sophistication. 

Heather Burns & Adam Driver | Photo: Julieta Cervantes

But what of the play itself? Like The Starry Messenger before it (another late Lonergan), Darling is meandering and overlong, packed with ideas but without any focus or clear narrative drive. Obviously, Lonergan is incapable of writing bad dialogue. Sometimes it does feel like we’re in the safe hands of a master, as in Strings’ insane quarreling with his brother Duke (C.J. Wilson, unearthing comic gold where he can) or Strings’ bizarre meet-cute with his hotel masseuse and future wife Nancy (Heather Burns, straining to find depth in a narrow stereotype). 

Yet for all the play’s comic highlights, Darling grows increasingly frustrating as the story stretches on. It is amusing, certainly, to watch Strings dig himself deeper and deeper holes with each disastrous life decision. But to what end? Strings keeps complaining about the stresses of fame, but Lonergan never digs deep into the pressures and challenges of life in the public eye. Certainly grief at his mother’s loss is a central theme, particularly since she never spoke a supportive word to Strings while alive. But Lonergan loses that thread until, abruptly, circling back to it in a jarringly sentimental final scene. And though Lonergan has written many great roles for actresses over his career, in the world of Darling women exist in one of two modes: either kindly little innocent, or manipulative golddigger. 

Any lesser Lonergan work is still a damn sight better than most plays, and Driver nearly makes the evening worthwhile with a powerhouse performance. But Darling is a long ride, and ultimately a grueling one. 

Hold On To Me Darling is now in performance through December 22, 2024 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.

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Joey Sims

Joey Sims has written at The Brooklyn Rail, TheaterMania, American Theatre Magazine, Culturebot, Exeunt NYC, New York Theatre Guide, No Proscenium, Broadway’s Best Shows, and Extended Play. He was previously Social Media Editor at Exeunt, and a freelance web producer at TodayTix Group. Joey is an alumnus of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Critics Institute, and a script reader for The O’Neill and New Dramatists. He runs a theater substack called Transitions.

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