The actor makes a compelling lead in the return of the playwright’s textured 2016 play about a celebrity returning home for his mother’s funeral
released the film Manchester by the Sea, a devastating and beautifully detailed portrait of a grief-stricken man, played by Casey Affleck; both Affleck’s performance and Lonergan’s screenplay went on to win Academy awards. That same year, a different Lonergan drama about grief received far less attention, as his play Hold On to Me Darling premiered off-Broadway, with Timothy Olyphant playing a world-famous country singer reeling from the recent loss of his mother.
Superficially, Olyphant sounds like a better fit to play Strings McCrane, a singer who returns to his small Tennessee hometown for his mother’s funeral, and starts seriously toying with the idea of sticking around, possibly abdicating his life as a musician and popular movie star.
Well, ambiguous on Essie’s end, at least. Strings’ tendency to make big, sometimes contradictory gestures – romantic and otherwise – might seem maddeningly flaky in the hands of another actor; Driver makes clear the mixture of stubbornness, hard work, and doofus-y pampering that creates these impulses, and with them, a man who doesn’t realize the extent to which he’s running from himself.
Yet despite a few moments that seem underworked, Hold On to Me Darling does ultimately take its time, running 160 minutes, and does end powerfully, almost on a more instinctive level than a purely dramatic one. As with other Lonergan plays like This Is Our Youth and Lobby Hero, the live tonal shifts lend it an electricity that’s hard to reproduce on film – and Driver plugs straight in.
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