A hunky country star, weary of fame and longing for the simple life, chucks it all to open a farm store in his hometown; there, romance, rippling pecs, and existential wrangling ensue. Though this could be the landing-page synopsis of the latest Hallmark Channel offering (a 2015 film called A Country Wedding comes pretty close), it is actually the plot of Hold On to Me Darling, a 2016 play by Kenneth Lonergan. A new revival of it is now playing off-Broadway at the Lucille Lortel Theatre, starring Adam Driver as Strings McCrane, a troubled crooner. (Neil Pepe directs.) Despite the schmaltzy setup, it is a thoughtful rumination on the hazards of celebrity with rich performances—including a wonderful one from Driver.
We first meet McCrane in a Kansas City hotel suite, where he is grappling with the recent death of his mother, a formidable woman he could never quite please. Enter Nancy, a local masseuse he engages for some stress relief, who quickly sees McCrane as her ticket out—and who could blame her? (For interested parties, a muscly Driver is in boxer briefs within 10 minutes of curtain.)
Played with a sharklike cunning and steadiness by Heather Burns, Nancy turns on the down-home charm, and McCrane, already wounded and searching for meaning, is like soft tissue in her oily hands. But she soon has a rival. At the funeral, McCrane runs into Essie, a cousin of indeterminate distance, and sparks fly. (We are in Tennessee now, after all.) Essie is an angelic foil to Nancy’s scheming; blonde and guileless, she is a kindergarten teacher resistant of Strings’s celebrity rather than enthralled by it. In a tender performance by Adelaide Clemens—who, it must be said, bears an uncanny resemblance to Lonergan’s Manchester by the Sea heroine, Michelle Williams—Essie is a calm port to Strings’s storm. They naturally have a drunken one-night stand.
To atone, McCrane hastily proposes to Nancy, and it would appear she’d got her man—though not before Nancy confronts Essie in a gripping scene of bless-your-heart dueling, that delicious specialty of the Southern woman brilliantly evoked by Lonergan here.
Buzzing around McCrane’s many affairs, both personal and professional, is his pathologically obliging and ever-present assistant, Jimmy. He is the one who must ring the avant-garde German film director with whom Strings is filming a space movie to pause production (which he does in perfect German), while also keeping a lid on his boss’s messy love life, and don’t forget the dry cleaning! Jimmy sniffed out Nancy’s act from the start, and it is fun watching the loyal yes-man and the crafty adventuress spar. It is also through Jimmy that we observe the absurdity of life as a modern celebrity (or the “third-biggest crossover star in the history of country music,” more specifically). With a toady at his disposal to do anything that makes him even mildly uncomfortable, it’s no surprise Strings feels out of touch.
By Act II, McCrane makes good on his threats to leave it all behind. He cancels his forthcoming tour, pulls out of the astronaut picture, and opens a feed store with his half brother, Duke. But just as life as a shopkeeper’s wife—and the mounting lawsuits from McCrane’s record company and the abandoned film—has Nancy running for the hills, Essie conveniently reappears, as does a surprise visitor from McCrane’s past in the final scene. Though the climactic reunion does not magically fill the ten-gallon hole that has plagued our hero, he does crack enough to let some light in.
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.