The gag – and it’s about as pitch-black a gag as you could imagine – is there in the title. Three African American guys hang out, shoot the breeze, chew the fat, discussing everything from pretty girls to who the best blues musician is. They bicker, disagree, pass on nuggets of wisdom and even sing an out-of-tune song or two, seemingly just to pass the time. But constantly interrupting their impromptu discussions are tortured, awkward movements, as the three lynched bodies hang together by their necks in deathly silence.
Writer and director Zora Howard’s brief but potent show comes to Edinburgh from New York’s Flea Theater, as part of the International Festival’s American theme marking the 250th anniversary of independence. It’s a brave and necessary acknowledgement of the darkness and pain behind any glitzy celebrations, but it’s to Howard’s immense credit that she resists delivering a lecture on history or morality. Indeed, the realisation of the dual nature of what we’re seeing on stage dawns only gradually, and is never explicitly explained. Are these men trapped in some kind of between-life-and-death limbo? Are they remembering their earlier lives? Is it some kind of before-and-after scenario? Hang Time’s strength lies in simply lining up its two forms of hanging, and letting its audience do the work in bringing them together.
Howard is effective, though, in sketching in character and memories with her trio of figures. Bird (an unhurried, authoritative Julian Rozzell) is the eldest, and keen to receive the respect he’s due. Ex-con Slim (a gloriously grinning Kamal Bolden) is the most outgoing, seemingly ready to kick off a fight just for the hell of it. Younger Blood (a gentle Bryce Foley) is the trio’s dreamer, imagining a life beyond their claustrophobic community. Neal Wilkinson’s ingenious and almost invisible set design sees the three men either standing or hanging in mid-air, and it’s almost impossible to tell which. Megan Culley’s atmospheric sound design transports us from the warm purring of cicadas to more abrasive, industrial sounds, only adding to the show’s sense of disorientation.
Hang Time is far from a polemic on civil rights or humankind’s inhumanity to itself. By speaking quietly but eloquently, however, and by highlighting the simple, ordinary, flawed humanity of its three enigmatic characters, it bears chilling witness to prejudice and hatred.
