Hold on to Me Darling

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Film and stage star Adam Driver has stepped into the role of Strings McCrane in the revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold on to Me Darling, originally created by Timothy Olyphant in 2016, and is giving a bravura performance as the self-dramatizing and self-pitying “third biggest crossover star in the history of country music” and an A-list movie star. The assured and confident direction is by Neil Pepe who piloted the earlier Atlantic Theatre Company production and three of the six actors (Adelaide Clemens, Keith Nobbs and CJ Wilson) have returned to their original roles.  While this comedic play is always entertaining with wonderful set pieces, at three hours the evening seems long as the play seems to repeat itself in each scene on the deeply American themes of the price of fame and the search for fulfillment.

While making a “space film” in Kansas City (ironically Driver has had a major role in the last three Star Wars movies), Strings receives the news that his mother has died in his home town of Beaumont, Tennessee. This precipitates a midlife crisis for the 39-year-old actor-singer: “I been empty inside. I been dead inside for years, and Mama’s passin’ away has woke me up and I don’t like it.”  He feels he has disappointed her as she has not been impressed by his celebrity.

Returning to his hometown for the funeral, he abandons the film he is making, and suggests to his estranged half-brother Duke that he will buy Ernie’s Feed store (where the boys both worked as teenagers) for the two of them, become a salesman and settle down in town with a wife and kids, just like his mother would have wanted. This would entail shutting down the sci-fi film he is currently making in K.C. and cancelling the tour for his new CD to be called “No Time for Tears,” which result in enormous lawsuits from the corporations affected.

In the meantime, Strings, separated from his latest celebrity girlfriend, becomes involved with Nancy, a married masseuse he has met at the hotel in Kansas City, a beautiful gold-digger who realizes a good thing when she sees it, and who proceeds to follow him to Beaumont. At the funeral he is reacquainted with Essie, his “second cousin twice removed,” a simple country girl with real wholesome values, a person that Nancy immediately sees as the threat she is. Nothing works out the way Strings has expected and his new life becomes more complicated than his old one.

Strings is a self-dramatizing, hypocritical, complaining 39-year-old who is constantly taking his emotional temperature, while at the same time responsible for a great deal of bad boy behavior partly made possible by his associates and acquaintances. However, as played by the charming Mr. Driver, we feel that Strings believes everything he says. Almost every third sentence he utters sounds like a new song title but in his mouth these lines sound completely believable – since he believes them. A big man at 6’3”, Driver gives a big performance both dramatically and emotionally, amusingly seesawing between moods and emotions at the drop of a hat.

As the sanctimonious opportunist who latches on to a gold mine as soon as she sees him, Heather Burns is subtle enough to hide her character’s real intentions until almost the end of the play but also gives us the feeling that she is trying to escape an abusive marriage.  Returning to the role in which she made her New York debut, Australian star Adelaide Clemens is the sweet, home-spun and honest Cousin Essie with whom you will be rooting that Strings ends up, the one honest thing in Strings’ life.

As Strings’ older brother Duke, CJ Wilson is terrific at continually cutting through all of his celebrity brother’s rubbish and rants to apprise him straightforwardly of the reality of things. Keith Nobbs is fine as Strings’ sycophantic personal assistant of 12 years who fiercely protects him as well as his own job. Like a puppy dog his Jimmy follows Strings around, implying to others than their relationship is more than a professional one. In a final scene revelation, the remarkable Frank Wood arrives to deliver the honesty and reality that Strings has claimed to look for all along. Each event and character offers another level of satire on the price of celebrity fame and success, though each scene seems to repeat the trajectory of the previous one. The play does a good job of poking fun at the problems of celebrities from maddening fans to unforgiving paparazzi.

Most of the original designers have returned with the exception of lighting designer Brian MacDevitt and the addition of a second costume designer. The elaborate production designed by returning designer Walt Spangler (and now lit by Tyler Micoleau) cleverly uses a turntable for the many detailed hotel rooms and small town locales that make up the story. Suttirat Larlarb and Lizzie Donelan’s costumes are as real as the sets. The sound design by David van Tieghem introduces us to the kind of songs that have made Strings famous. Kate Wilson is the vocal coach who helps bring the Kansas City and Tennessee dialects to life.

In the hands of someone other than Adam Driver, Strings McCrane might be a self-pitying monster too extreme to take seriously. However, this accomplished and charismatic actor has just the right amount of blarney to make Kenneth Lonergan’s Hold On to Me Darling one of the most entertaining plays in town. And you will learn a good deal about the lives of the rich and famous and how they get away with the antics they commit.

Hold on to Me Darling (through December 22, 2024)

Lucille Lortel Theatre, 121 Christopher Street, between Bleecker and Hudson Streets, in Manhattan

For tickets, visit http://www.holdontomedarling.com

Running time: three hours and five minutes including one intermission