Strings McCrane, “the third-biggest crossover star in the history of country music”, may not have it all, but he sure has a lot. There’s the ranch, the beach house, the LA house, the big jet, the little jet, the big boat, the little boat, 20 cars and trucks, and even a resident Zen master. “You know what that son of a bitch Zen master’s been chargin’ me ever since I attained the second level?” Strings complains.
Yet it’s not enough. Or maybe it’s too much. On the occasion of his mother’s death, he decides to leave it all behind and buy a small feed store in the Tennessee town of his birth.
This doomed and ridiculous bid for authenticity is at the heart of Kenneth Lonergan’s amusing and uneven Hold on to Me Darling at the Atlantic Theater Company. A changeable blend of farce, comedy and drama, it stars Timothy Olyphant (Deadwood, Justified) as a country music legend turned film star turned purveyor of cat food.
We first find Strings (you, too, might adopt such a moniker if your given name were Clarence) in a luxury hotel room, moaning to his personal assistant, Jimmy (Keith Nobbs), about his suffering. “I want to be a person. The person my mama always wanted me to be. And that’s what I’m gonna dedicate my life to doin’,” he wails. He goes on to salve this pain by smashing a pricey guitar and seducing a willing masseuse (Jenn Lyon).
Lonergan (This is Our Youth, You Can Count on Me, Margaret) has always been a bard of hypocrisy, particularly as articulated by likable characters; Hold On to Me Darling is very much in this vein. It becomes clear that Strings’s search for truth is just another kind of indulgence and that he will find any number of ways to justify, temporize and enjoy bad behavior all under the guise of personal growth. He even gets others, like Nancy, the masseuse, to do his justifying for him. “I just can’t believe he’s responsible for his actions,” Nancy pertly tells a rival.
It’s a fine premise, but Lonergan and the director, Neil Pepe, are not quite sure what to do with it. The first scene plays out as half screwball, half serious and the tone keeps changing throughout. Olyphant, as a monster of self-regard, is steady at the center and an awfully good sport and CJ Wilson, as his gruff brother Duke, nicely straddles the different styles – but Nancy and Jimmy seem to be inhabitants of an entirely separate play from the one featuring Essie (Adelaide Clemens), Strings’s sweet-natured cousin, and Mitch (Jonathan Hogan), a character with a complicated relationship to Strings who arrives late in the play.
Too many scenes seem to do the same narrative work and the abrupt ending, another tonal swerve, seems as yet unfinished. But Lonergan’s dialogue is as effervescent as ever and his wry, sympathetic sense of the ways in which we lie to each other and to ourselves remains unmatched. If only he had a tighter hold on the play itself.
