First Nighter: Timothy Olyphant in Kenneth Lonergan's "Hold On to Me Darling," Marin Ireland in Martyna Majok's "Ironbound"

With his new Hold On to Me Darling, at the Atlantic, Kenneth Lonergan has written one of the season's most head-scratching plays. That's if it's not the most head-scratching entry, as directed--but not necessarily thoroughly helped along--by Neil Pepe.
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With his new Hold On to Me Darling, at the Atlantic, Kenneth Lonergan has written one of the season's most head-scratching plays. That's if it's not the most head-scratching entry, as directed--but not necessarily thoroughly helped along--by Neil Pepe.

Lonergan's first act is little short of sensational. He introduces country-music crossover star Strings (born Clarence) McCrane (Timothy Olyphant) in the Kansas City hotel room he's taken just before traveling to his mother's Beaumont, Tennessee funeral. Grieving but guilt-ridden because, despite his success, he believes he's never lived up to the apparently ever-censorious woman's hopes for him, Strings is not only questioning everything about his multi-million-dollar career but intent on giving it up for a quiet Beaumont life, running the local feed store he liked during his childhood.

Coddled by adoring assistant Jimmy (Keith Nobbs} and then falling for married-with-two-daughters masseuse Nancy (Jenn Lyon)--because he claims she's the first down-to-earth woman he's encountered in years--he goes home to crash at the noisy home of older brother Duke (JC Wilson) and reunite with all-but-forgotten second-cousin-twice-removed Essie (Adelaide Clemmons), whom he decides is an even more down-to-earth woman than Nancy and therefore even more worthy of his attention.

The captivating writing Lonergan does while the incidents mount--Strings being read not the riot act but the reality act by Duke, Essie and eventually gold-digging Nancy--is how the dramatist slowly exposes his initially sympathetic protagonist as shallowly-self-possessed and self-serving.

That's Lonergan's intriguing first act. Then, unfortunately, he presents his second act. In it not a lot makes sense. Evidently unsure where to go, he repeats Strings's shilly-shallying between Nancy and Essie so much so that he eventually includes a scene where Nancy, now married to Strings and jealous of his attentions to Essie, confronts the jerked-around but clear-headed second cousin.

Then he ventures into totally unbelievable areas. He walks out on the space-adventure movie he's had shut down for his mom's death and burial. He jettisons his recording contact. The resulting law suits add up to $400 million, whereas he only has slightly more that $1 million in the bank, as Nancy points out. He buys and commits himself to Ernie's feed store (about which he has no retailing knack) for Duke and him to run. I don't think so.

(Walt Spangler has designed an ingenious revolving set, the slicked-up feed store revealed as the last revolve. Suttirat Anne Larfarb designed the costumes, Brian MacDevitt the lighting and David Van Tieghem the sound, which features country songs during scene breaks and, it seems, Patsy Cline among the singers.)

On top of these head-spinning twists, Lonergan goes further and, in a move that hasn't been seen on stage in several decades (if this reviewer's memory serves), he brings on a new character just before closing. Who this is won't be identified here, but he's played by acting vet Jonathan Hogan. It's with this totally unexpected character that Lonergan--embarrassingly at a loss as to how to end the nearly three-hour Strings McCrane saga--finds his unconvincing fade-out.

This is no fault of the acting ensemble, led by the chiseled head-to-toe Olyphant, who brings as much verisimilitude to the addled Strings as playwright Lonergan allows. The crossover celeb is constantly breaking down--how much of the tears are of the crocodile variety is tough to gauge--and Olyphant is definitely good at that. Each of the others is on the money, although Lyon as the changeable Nancy has the toughest role and does a bang-up job making it all of a piece. She also appears to give a first-rate massage. Has she created a website?
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If Marin Ireland isn't the most accomplished actress working regularly in Manhattan--and now in films and on television as well--she's inarguably one of the top four or five. The latest indelible characterization she's adding to her resumé is Darja, a Mittel-European woman who hangs out over a couple decades at an Elizabeth, New Jersey bus stop near a factory where she either works or has worked.

The working-years discrepancy stems from the three decades in which Martyna Majok's Ironbound takes place, at the Rattlestick in a Women's Project co-production--in 1992, 2006 and 2014. Playwright Majok looks closely at Darja as she interacts during this play's intermissionless 90 minutes with current mail-carrier lover,Tommy (Morgan Spector), with (deceased by 2014) husband Maks (Josiah Bania) and with well-meaning Seton Hall Prep student Vic (Shiloh Fernandez), who rents himself out and may deal drugs to be considered one of the boys.

Speaking in an accent that never wavers (Charlotte Fleck is the dialect coach), Ireland remains on stage throughout Majok's character study. Furious in 2014 at seven-year boyfriend Tommy, who's been playing around with what Darja estimates have been 14 women, she's trying to figure out what she wants for herself and for her eventually estranged son Alex.

During those extended bus stop interludes with the three men (lighting designer Justin Townsend indicates the many changes in time-frame), she relives the provocative encounters that leave her agitated, mocking, vengeful, confused and, when at her lowest ebb, profoundly hopeless. (By the way, is the bus stop among those near the abandoned factories that are visible from a New Jersey Transit train as it passes through Elizabeth?)

Were Ireland any less good at bringing Darja to writhing life, under Daniella Topol's direction, Ironbound might register as far sketchier than it is. One question that hangs in the air is what hold that bus stop has to the extent that Darja is ready to spend the night sleeping there rather than stopping into a local beanery. Is it simply that the factory where she toiled has at least some sweet memories for her? (For the bus-stop site, designer Townsend provides little more than an upstage gravel bank and gravel at the stage's edges that the actors can crunch underfoot.

Drawing on her skill playing a blue-collar worker (she was last seen at Lincoln Center's Claire Tow as a slaughterhouse employee in Kill Floor), Ireland is ready to let all emotions overwhelm Darja whether she's 42 and fighting with Tommy, 34 and refusing to take money from rich-kid-playing-street-urchin Vic or the younger Darja when married to Maks. Some of her most effective moments occur when in her 40s she goes blank-eyed in inconsolable despair.

Spector, wearing a New Jersey Devils jacket (to underline the post-industrial, Garden State setting), Fernandez and Bania as the men in Darja's life are all persuasive and certainly at the decibel level Topol establishes the second Townsend's lights go up.

Why Majok calls the piece Ironbound isn't immediately clear. Was an iron factory where Darja worked? Perhaps it's ultimately a reference to Darja's constitution. If so, she's got the right person in the lead role: The ever-remarkable Ireland.

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