McDonagh smirked before offering two answers.
First answer: Some have argued that the hanging was faster and more compassionate than, for example, the prolonged drama and the preparations for death by electric chair. Among these defenders was Pierrepoint, who hung between 400 and 600 people before retiring in 1956, and who reportedly hanged a man once in seven seconds.
“All of his stuff was not torture,” said McDonagh. “It was fair: a sentence was passed, and I will do it in the most humane and quickest way possible.”
Second answer: “You know in your own country, you always do. And we don’t do it anymore. “
“Hangmen” on Broadway is directed by Matthew Dunster, who oversaw the previous productions of the play, as well as McDonagh’s most recent play, “A Very Very Very Dark Matter” (He imagines that the stories of Hans Christian Andersen have written by a small Congolese girl he kept in a cage; critics did not reach a consensus that it was offensive or brilliant or both, but he had no additional production.) Will also direct the West End cover of another McDonagh play, “The Pillowman,” in July.
“He chooses to go to very strange places, and to tell these extraordinary stories,” said Dunster of McDonagh. “These are stories that emerge from a fully imagined world – often a very dark world.”
Dunster knows this firsthand. He comes from Oldham, in the north of England, where “Hangmen” takes place. But McDonagh never went to Oldham. And when Dunster asked if he wanted to visit the decor for his own room, he replied: Why would I want to go to Oldham?
Not that McDonagh is afraid to go somewhere. For a quarter of a century now, he’s been this dinner guest ready to empty the room with shocking observations that also happen to be funny – and true. He intends to provoke reflection, and if there is a laugh, so much the better. Or is it the reverse?