Hold On to Me Darling

Last updated
Hold on to Me Darling
Written by Kenneth Lonergan
Date premieredFebruary 24, 2016
Place premiered Linda Gross Theatre
Original languageEnglish
Subject existentialism, grief, family, midlife crisis, fame
SettingTennessee

Hold on to Me Darling is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. The show, first produced Off-Broadway in 2016, follows a fictional country music icon named Strings McCrane, who finds himself in an existential tailspin on learning of his mother's death.

Contents

The play had its world premiere off-Broadway starring Timothy Olyphant and was produced by the Atlantic Theater Company. It received a nomination for the Outer Critics Circle Award for Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play.

Summary

The story revolves around a country music icon named Strings McCrane, who finds himself in an existential tailspin on learning of his mother's death. Determined to abandon his celebrity and career, he moves back to his hometown in Tennessee.

Cast

Role Linda Gross Theatre
Off-Broadway (2016)
Lucille Lortel Theatre
Off-Broadway (2024)
Strings McCrane Timothy Olyphant Adam Driver
Essie Adelaide Clemens
Nancy Jenn Lyon Heather Burns
Jimmy Keith Nobbs
Mitch Jonathan Hogan Frank Wood
Duke C.J. Wilson

Productions

The play had its world premiere in 2016, opening on March 14 at Atlantic Theater Company’s Linda Gross Theater starring Timothy Olyphant and directed by Neil Pepe. [1] The play will have a off-Broadway revival at the Lucille Lortel Theatre starring Adam Driver and will run from September 24, 2024 to December 22. [2]

Critical reception

The 2016 production received mixed reviews with Frank Rizzo of Variety praising its lead star Olyphant but writing that while "The play is entertaining and engaging, performed by a top-rate ensemble...its long reach for political and social resonance is a stretch, with Strings and those around him equating or manipulating his celebrity life and personal angst to a larger moral drift of the country." [3] David Rooney of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "There’s a much better play nestling in the almost three hours of Hold On to Me Darling, but Lonergan seems unwilling to find it, leaving most of the poignancy buried between his disjointed scenes en route to a conclusion of unearned emotion.". [4] Alexis Soloski of The Guardian described the play as being "amusing but uneven", adding that it was a "A changeable blend of farce, comedy and drama". [5]

Awards and nominations

YearAwardCategoryNominated workResultRef.
2016 Outer Critics Circle Award Outstanding New Off-Broadway Play Kenneth Lonergan Nominated [6]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Kander</span> American musical theatre composer

John Harold Kander is an American composer, known largely for his work in the musical theater. As part of the songwriting team Kander and Ebb, Kander wrote the scores for 15 musicals, including Cabaret (1966) and Chicago (1975), both of which were later adapted into acclaimed films. He and Ebb also wrote the standard "New York, New York". The team also received numerous nominations, which include five additional Tony Awards, two Academy Awards, and four Golden Globe Awards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Matthew Broderick</span> American actor (born 1962)

Matthew Broderick is an American actor. His roles include the Golden Globe–nominated portrayal of the title character in Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986), the voice of adult Simba in Disney's The Lion King (1994), and Leo Bloom in both the Broadway musical The Producers and its 2005 film adaptation. Other films he has starring credits in include WarGames (1983), Glory (1989), The Freshman (1990), The Cable Guy (1996), Godzilla (1998), Election (1999), Inspector Gadget (1999), You Can Count on Me (2000), and The Last Shot (2004). Broderick also directed himself in Infinity (1996) and provided voice work in Good Boy! (2003), Bee Movie (2007), and The Tale of Despereaux (2008).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kevin Kline</span> American actor (born 1947)

Kevin Delaney Kline is an American actor. In a career spanning over five decades, he has become a prominent leading man across both stage and screen. His accolades include an Academy Award and three Tony Awards, along with nominations for two British Academy Film Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and five Golden Globe Awards. In 2003, he was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nathan Lane</span> American actor (born 1956)

Nathan Lane is an American actor. Since 1975, he has been seen on stage and screen in both comedic and dramatic roles. Lane has received numerous awards, including three Tony Awards, seven Drama Desk Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, three Emmy Awards, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Lane received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame in 2008. In 2010, The New York Times hailed Lane as "the greatest stage entertainer of the decade".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Busch</span> American dramatist

Charles Louis Busch is an American actor, screenwriter, playwright and drag queen, known for his appearances on stage in his own camp style plays and in film and television. He wrote and starred in his early plays off-off-Broadway beginning in 1978, generally in drag roles, and also acted in the works of other playwrights. He also wrote for television and began to act in films and on television in the late 1990s. His best known play is The Tale of the Allergist's Wife (2000), which was a success on Broadway.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katharine Houghton</span> American actress and playwright (born 1945)

Katharine Houghton is an American actress and playwright. She portrayed Joanna "Joey" Drayton, a white woman who brings home her black fiancé to meet her parents, in the 1967 film Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. Katharine Hepburn, who played the mother of Houghton's character in the film, was Houghton's aunt. She is also known for her role as Kanna, the grandmother of Katara and Sokka in the film The Last Airbender (2010).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Olyphant</span> American actor (born 1968)

Timothy David Olyphant is an American actor. He made his acting debut in an off-Broadway theater in 1995, in The Monogamist, and won the Theatre World Award for his performance, and then originated David Sedaris' The Santaland Diaries in 1996. He then branched out to film; in the early years of his career, he was often cast in supporting villainous roles, most notably in Scream 2 (1997), Go (1999), Gone in 60 Seconds (2000), A Man Apart (2003), and The Girl Next Door (2004).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Christine Ebersole</span> American actress and singer (b. 1953)

Christine Ebersole is an American actress and singer. She has appeared in film, television, and on stage. She starred in the Broadway musicals 42nd Street and Grey Gardens, winning two Tony Awards. In 1984, she appeared as Caterina Cavalieri in the Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award, and Directors Guild of America Award-winning period biographical drama film Amadeus.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kelli O'Hara</span> American actress and singer (born 1976)

Kelli Christine O'Hara is an American actress and singer, most known for her work on the Broadway and opera stages.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kenneth Lonergan</span> American film director, playwright, and screenwriter

Kenneth Lonergan is an American film director, playwright, and screenwriter. He is the co-writer of the film Gangs of New York (2002), and wrote and directed You Can Count on Me (2000), Margaret (2011), and Manchester by the Sea (2016). Lonergan is also known for his work as a playwright. His most noted plays include This Is Our Youth, Lobby Hero and The Waverly Gallery. Each also had a successful revival engagement on Broadway, which resulted in each play receiving a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

<i>This Is Our Youth</i> Play written by Kenneth Lonergan

This Is Our Youth is a play by American dramatist and screenwriter Kenneth Lonergan. It premiered Off-Broadway in 1996 and since been produced all over the world, including the West End, Broadway, Sydney and Toronto.

Stephen Adly Guirgis is an American playwright, screenwriter, director, and actor. He is a member and a former co-artistic director of New York City's LAByrinth Theater Company. His plays have been produced both Off-Broadway and on Broadway, as well as in the UK. His play Between Riverside and Crazy won the 2015 Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">J. Smith-Cameron</span> American actress (born 1957)

Jean Isabel Smith, credited professionally as J. Smith-Cameron, is an American actress. She gained prominence for her roles as Janet Talbot in the Sundance TV series Rectify (2013–2016) and Gerri Kellman in the HBO series Succession (2018–2023), the latter of which earned her two Primetime Emmy Award nominations.

Halley Feiffer is an American actress, playwright and television writer, known for her award-winning plays I'm Gonna Pray for You So Hard, Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow Moscow and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Gynecologic Oncology Unit at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center of New York City, and for showrunning and writing the entire season of American Horror Story: Delicate starring Emma Roberts and Kim Kardashian.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kate Baldwin</span> American singer

Katherine Baldwin is an American singer and actress known for her work in musical theater. She received a Tony Award nomination for her work in the 2009 Broadway revival of Finian's Rainbow. She also co-starred opposite Bette Midler, David Hyde Pierce, and Gavin Creel in the Broadway revival of Hello, Dolly!, for which she received Tony, Drama Desk, and Outer Critics Circle award nominations for her work as the saucy millineress Irene Molloy. Baldwin continued with the production until it closed in August 2018.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Sadoski</span> American actor (born 1976)

Thomas Christian Sadoski is an American actor. He is best known for his roles as Don Keefer in the HBO series The Newsroom and as Matt Short in the sitcom television series Life in Pieces.

Lobby Hero is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. It premiered off-Broadway in 2001.

The Waverly Gallery is a play by Kenneth Lonergan. It is considered a "memory play". The show, first produced Off-Broadway in 2000, follows a grandson watching his grandmother slowly die from Alzheimer's disease. The play was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 2001.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucas Hedges</span> American actor (born 1996)

Lucas Hedges is an American actor. A son of filmmaker Peter Hedges, he studied theater at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Hedges began his acting career with a supporting role in Wes Anderson's comedy-drama Moonrise Kingdom (2012). He had his breakthrough in 2016 playing a sardonic teenager in Kenneth Lonergan's drama Manchester by the Sea, which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, among other accolades. Hedges then starred as an aggressive youth in an off-Broadway production of Yen and had supporting roles in the coming-of-age film Lady Bird and the drama Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri in 2017.

Charles Joseph Wilson is an American film and theater actor. In 2010, he received a Lucille Lortel Award nomination for his role as Michael in Lucinda Coxon's play Happy Now?. He was nominated again in 2016 for Outstanding Featured Actor in a Play for his role in Hold On to Me Darling.

References

  1. "Kenneth Lonergan's Hold On To Me Darling, Starring Timothy Olyphant, Extends Off-Broadway". BroadwayWorld. Retrieved August 1, 2024.
  2. "Adam Driver to star in 'Hold on to Me Darling' off Broadway this fall". NY Theatre Guide. Retrieved August 1, 2024.
  3. "Off Broadway Review: Timothy Olyphant in Kenneth Lonergan's 'Hold on to Me Darling'". Variety. Retrieved August 1, 2024.
  4. "'Hold On to Me Darling': Theater Review". The Hollywood Reporter . Retrieved August 1, 2024.
  5. "Hold on to Me Darling review – troubles of a pampered country star". The Guardian . Retrieved August 1, 2024.
  6. "Outer Critics Circle Awards 2016: And the Winners are..." NY Theatre Guide. Retrieved August 1, 2024.