Hold on to Me Darling Off-Broadway Reviews

Other than a few cast changes, most notably Driver in the role first played by Timothy Olyphant, the show is pretty much what it was when it debuted at the Atlantic Theater Company in 2016. The physical production looks as if it had been preserved since then in mothballs, with the same cramped, slowly revolving set by Walt Spangler. The few tweaks to the script are almost invisible. Neither Lonergan nor the director, Neil Pepe, seems to have felt the need for refinement.

Throughout the play’s somewhat meandering 2 hours 40 minutes, Driver does not hit a false note, a feat considering the aw-shucks, cowboy clichés lurking in the lines for less capable actors. And the slightly overlong story is helped along by a steady stream of laughs, remarkably more than expected given the premise. (Adam Driver dealing with grief and existential dread does not immediately evoke comedy.) But even when playing the whiny mama’s boy or entitled fame monster, his openness is magnetic, especially at such close range in the Lortel—an ideal venue for his gifts. One can’t help but fall to pieces.

It’s not that Hold On To Me Darling – opening tonight Off Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre – is bad (it isn’t, though there are moments that do their best to convince otherwise). Confounding might be a more accurate description, starting with this: In the eight years since its last Off Broadway production, directed, like this one, by Neil Pepe, how could the supremely gifted Lonergan (This Is Our Youth, The Waverly Gallery, Lobby Hero) not come to some decision about what, exactly, this shaggy dog is supposed to be about?

This sequence first feels rushed, and a too-late story-changing add-on. However, like all the other things that should not work in a long play, this finds its smooth right spot in the adept hands of Pepe and his very good cast, led by Driver. The actor masters the art of quiet bafflement and existential muddle. His furrowed brow is broken only by one extended moment of menace; when that happens, primed for a Driver explosion of some kind, you anticipate, ultimately in vain, the inevitable detonation. Instead, Hold on to Me Darling retains its subtle mischief, gentle unspooling, and dry execution right to the end, scoring a true original in the process—in this role, Adam Driver doesn’t go off.

“Hold on to Me Darling” was the best new play of 2016 when it opened at the Atlantic Theater. Eight years later, Kenneth Lonergan’s comedy about a country singer is the best contemporary play now on the boards in New York City. A most entertaining revival opened Wednesday at the Lucille Lortel Theatre.

Despite a fine cast and some good laughs, three hours is too long for what “Hold On To Me Darling” winds up being, which is a strange, slight if appealing comedy that strains to be pointed and poignant.

In Hold on to Me Darling Lonergan creates a protagonist at a loss as to who he is, spending nearly three hours remaining befuddled in a work that, as it motors along, doesn’t seem to know how to ease out of a repetitive plot dilemma. It’s an eight-scene drama, often peppered with genuine humor, that holds on to tense interest for maybe five of the scenes—and luckily the final one. For the remainder of its attenuated minutes, it merely tests audience goodwill.

Everybody knows he’s a fine actor, but who knew that Adam Driver could be so gosh-darned charming? Driver’s delightful performance as a showbiz superstar melting down in an existential crisis rockets Hold on to Me Darling into hot-ticket status at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, where its production opened on Wednesday. Already the show is said to be practically a sell-out for the remainder of its two-month run at the 299-seat Off Broadway house.

Not to mention that Strings, as Duke wisely points out, is "reorderin' [his] life to suit [his mother] now she's gone." It quickly becomes clear that he doesn't truly know what he wants for himself. The grass isn't greener on any side, for anyone. The ending, in which Strings reunites with his remaining parent (Frank Wood, always reliable), is supposedly meant to finally ground him a bit. Pepe's production doesn't quite stick the landing, but it's a testament to Driver's performance, and that of the entire ace cast, that I was left wanting to keep going on Strings's journey, to know where he lands.