Improbable Theatre The Hanging Man

"Mesmerizing, fascinating, hilarious, and terrifying."
--Yorkshire Evening Post

England's ever inventive Improbable Theatre return for the U.S. premiere of The Hanging Man, their darkly comic, beautifully realized new production launched with a Wexner Center creative residency last summer. "A triumph of theater, at turns genuinely funny and inescapably moving...see it now."--Bradford Telegraph

Medieval and modern, The Hanging Man is an update on the mystery plays of the Middle Ages with a chorus of conical-hatted Punchinello characters who amplify the pathos and instigate slapstick pratfalls for the central figure of the hanging man. This bitter-sweet-bitter tale tracks the fate of Edward Braff, a brilliant architect who dreams of building a majestic cathedral but ends up frustrated, suicidal, and suspended--by a noose of his own design--in limbo. Among the beams, ropes, pillars, and tapestries are the peculiar troupe who tell the tale they always tell--of the hapless hanging man, his unrealized potential, and his hopeless and hilarious struggle to dictate his own terms to Death.

You'll be enchanted by the striking set and soundscape (by Darron West of The SITI Company), as well as the Improbables' characteristic visual flair and freewheeling storytelling, which also enlivened their Obie-winning 70 Hill Lane, Spirit, and the deliciously macabre Shockheaded Peter. Improbable Theatre's The Hanging Man promises to get our new season off to a swinging start.

Coproduced by the Wexner Center, The West Yorkshire Playhouse, Walker Art Center, Weiner Festwochen, and The Lyric Hammersmith.