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    In ‘Prima Facie,’ Jodie Comer Finds Her Light

    The one-woman show, coming to Broadway, is the “Killing Eve” star’s first stage role. She dared herself to do it.Until last year, the actress Jodie Comer had never performed onstage. Comer, 30, a native of Liverpool, England, who began her career as a teenager, hadn’t gone to drama school. She hadn’t studied voice or movement. Her comfort was in the close-up, the medium shot. She knew how to make her face still and her voice quiet, and to let the camera do the rest. The theater directors she auditioned for didn’t trust that she could fill a stage.“It kind of felt unattainable,” she said.But she is filling one now. On Broadway, at the John Golden Theater on West 45th Street, her face is emblazoned above the marquee, twice. The art for the Olivier Award-winning “Prima Facie” — an intimate and harrowing monodrama about a woman contending with the fallout of a sexual assault — shows Comer bathed in pink tones, serene, in a barrister’s wig, her eyes closed; it also shows her washed in blue, screaming. Opening on April 23, the play, which Comer first performed in London last year, runs 100 minutes. She is alone onstage for all of them. It’s the theatrical equivalent of being shoved down a mountain the first time you put on skis, or off a high dive before you have even learned to swim.Comer put it a little differently. “I pushed myself,” she said.This was on a Sunday morning in late March, at an out-of-the way table at a West Village cafe. Comer, buoyed by the London-to-New York time change, had arrived early, chipper and casual in jeans and a fisherman’s sweater. (Casual, but not entirely anonymous: The reservation was in my name, yet a waiter had already brought a plate of complimentary pastries.) A plastic clip held her hair away from her face.About that face: Comer has wide-set eyes, full lips and an impossible milk-and-roses complexion. She looks like a Botticelli goddess who has stepped out of the canvas and into some cute ankle boots. And yet, if you have seen her previous work — the action comedy “Free Guy,” the action drama “The Last Duel,” the crusading BBC film “Help” and, most significantly, the queer assassin fever dream “Killing Eve” — you will know that her beauty is usually the least interesting thing about her. That prettiness is a mask she can remove at will, exposing something weirder, spikier, wilder beneath.A theatrical debut and an endurance test: Comer is alone onstage for the full 100-minute run of “Prima Facie.”Helen Murray“It’s like Jodie didn’t get the memo that she is staggeringly beautiful,” Shawn Levy, who directed “Free Guy,” told me. “Jodie is uninterested in relying on her physical appearance.”Unlike many beautiful actresses, Comer has mostly avoided wife, girlfriend and love-interest parts — and their inherent limitations. “From early on, my characters were quite nuanced or multifaceted,” she said. “I was probably very lucky that that’s where I started. Once people see you in that light, they latch on to that.”At the cafe, the morning sun showed her as friendly, unassuming almost, until she began to speak about her work. Then, behind those wide eyes, something like lightning flashed.“Jodie is extraordinarily powerful,” Shannon Murphy, a director who worked closely with her on “Killing Eve,” told me. “People aren’t just going to cast her as the girl next door. Because it’s a waste.”And yet, the role that Comer plays in “Prima Facie” is very much a girl next door, which lends the show much of its heartbreak and force. Written by Suzie Miller, an Australian attorney turned playwright, and directed by Justin Martin (“The Jungle”), also Australian, “Prima Facie” centers on Tessa Ensler, a promising barrister who has transcended her working-class origins and accent. When she finds herself the victim of a sexual assault, a crime whose accused perpetrators she had often defended, Tessa’s poise and selfhood collapse. In this play, the reality and violence of the assault is never in doubt. That it should happen to a woman like Comer’s Tessa — so pretty, so assertive, so canny — means that it could happen to anyone.“Prima Facie” debuted in Sydney in 2019, starring the Australian actress Sheridan Harbridge. When Miller and Martin knew that they wanted to take it to London, they began throwing around the names of English actresses. Martin suggested Comer. Miller said no. She had seen Comer on “Killing Eve,” as the mercurial assassin Villanelle, who is Russian-born and Russian-accented. Comer’s Emmy Award-winning command of the role was so absolute that Miller assumed that Comer was actually Russian. Once Martin gently corrected her, a script was sent.It reached Comer early in Britain’s lockdown, in Liverpool, where she was living with her parents. It spoke to her directly, and at volume. She had several friends who had undergone versions of Tessa’s experience. And the professional challenge was as serious as it was undeniable.“I was so fearful of it. I knew if I said no to it, it would be purely because of that,” Comer said. “But there was a part of myself deep down that believed I could do it, and I was interested in how I was going to get to that point.”That fear powered her initial approach to the role. “She gets scared,” Martin said. “But her way of dealing with it is to throw herself into it.”Comer as the assassin Villanelle with Sandra Oh in BBC’s “Killing Eve.” “People aren’t just going to cast her as the girl next door,” said Shannon Murphy, a director who worked closely with Comer on the show.BBC AmericaComer discovered theater in her teens. “I got into it because I enjoyed it. It made me happy. I don’t think that’s ever changed,” she said. A teacher put her forward for a radio drama, which led to an agent and to occasional television appearances. After graduation, she worked at a supermarket checkout and at a bar to make ends meet. Her idea of luxury was being able to make a living from acting only. Her first major break came seven years ago, when she was cast as the lead in “Thirteen,” a BBC drama about a woman who escapes from long captivity. Even then, Comer couldn’t land a stage role.But the recognition that “Killing Eve” brought changed all that. For Martin and for James Bierman, lead producer on “Prima Facie,” her lack of theater experience was never a problem. They offered her the resources — voice lessons, movement sessions — and the rehearsal time that she would need.Comer has always been an intuitive actor. The challenge, she found, was to take that intuition and extend it outward so that it reached the last row of the balcony. “Like, how do I emote from the top of my head to the tip of my toes?” she said.Rehearsals, which began early in 2022, were rigorous, as was Comer’s research. She spoke to barristers, to police officers, to a high-court judge. She visited a police station and attended a hearing. She had herself fitted for a wig. What would a woman like Tessa wear, she wanted to know. What would she eat? How would she sit, stand and speak? In watching some of the women barristers at work, Comer felt an immediate connection.“There were elements of it that felt like theater: the costumes, the cues, the rehearsal of the lines,” she said.The challenge in translating her instincts for TV acting, Comer found, was to extend them outward so that they reached the last row of the balcony. “Like, how do I emote from the top of my head to the tip of my toes?” she said.Sabrina Santiago for The New York TimesTelevision and film sets provide elaborate, realistic environments. Especially if the projects are shot on location. Theater is a more symbolic space, a conjuration of lights and plywood, which offered Comer a kind of freedom. In that glow, she could experiment, she could play. “What theater really sparked in me was that curiosity and sense of imagination,” she said with all the eagerness of a recent convert. Onstage there was no armor, no safety, no ability to stop and take it again, particularly in the scene in which Comer, alone on the floor of the stage, depicts the assault.Miller was convinced, even during rehearsals. “She is magnificent onstage; she’s a theater animal,” she said of Comer on a recent video call. “She’s the character. She’s there.”But after years of performing on television and film, Comer hadn’t known how a live audience would respond. Her anxiety remained up until the first curtain and perhaps even after. “I was actually quite consumed by fear,” she said. “I didn’t really come up for air.”She recalled that, toward the end of the first preview in London, she heard a woman in the orchestra crying. “It was the most guttural cry,” Comer said. “It spread around the theater. It was like the audience were giving each other this unspoken permission to feel whatever was coming up for them.”Stephen Graham, an actor who worked with a teenage Comer on “Good Cop” and then again on “Help,” saw “Prima Facie” in London and wept through it, admiring “the beauty and the subtlety and the nuance and the craftsmanship that went into that performance,” he said.I didn’t see it in London, but I watched it a few weeks ago, on video, via a National Theater Live performance capture. Her craftsmanship was apparent from the first few minutes. Look at Comer in a robe, I thought to myself. Look how good she is. Then the character seemed to take her over. Absorbed in the story, I forgot about Comer, forgot about her beauty, and thought only of Tessa.Miller had noticed this, too. “You don’t look at her and go, ‘There’s a beautiful woman crying.’ You go, ‘There’s a devastated woman crying,’” she said.Over breakfast, Comer had said that despite her leading lady facade, she understands herself as a character actress, someone who wants to disappear into a part, even though or especially because she can’t even disappear into a Village cafe. “I’d love to get to a point where I play a role where I don’t recognize myself,” she said.“Prima Facie” began as a personal challenge, a dare almost. Could she manage alone onstage for all that time? Could she pull off the scene changes and the radical shifts in emotion? But it has become about something more.Women waited for her at the stage door every night in London, telling her that their experiences mirrored Tessa’s or that they were considering careers in law to support women like her. By vanishing into Tessa, she has given these women a way to recognize themselves. That image near the marquee? It’s her face, doubly exposed, but it’s also a mosaic composed of photos of women who submitted their pictures and stories. That’s what Comer wants: to feel part of something bigger than herself, to feel some greater purpose is working through her.“It’s those moments where you step out of your way when you feel the most fulfilled,” she said. More

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    Corey Hawkins, Yahya Abdul-Mateen II in ‘Topdog/Underdog’ and the Art of Deception

    “I know we brothers,” Lincoln tells his younger sibling, Booth, in Suzan-Lori Parks’s “Topdog/Underdog.” With a slight hesitation, he then asks, “but is we really brothers, you know, blood brothers or not, you and me, whatduhyathink?”The question, posed late in this dynamic two-hander, is both a catalyst and crisis for Parks’s most famous characters: Lincoln, or “Link,” a three-card monte con artist turned whiteface-wearing Abraham Lincoln impersonator, and Booth, a shoplifter and ladies’ man. And for the actors starring in the play’s Broadway revival, Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II, the question takes on an even deeper meaning given their electrifying chemistry onstage.“What I love about this experience is that there’s so much respect back and forth between Corey and me,” Abdul-Mateen, 38, who portrays Booth, said. “It’s no ego, just respect.”Hawkins, 34, playfully quipped, “I have a little bit of ego.”In his review, Jesse Green praised both actors, noting Hawkins’s “astonishing verbal and physical performance” as Lincoln and how Abdul-Mateen, in his Broadway debut, “fully meets the challenge, banking sympathy with his sweetness.”Hawkins, left, as Lincoln and Abdul-Mateen as Booth in the acclaimed production, directed by Kenny Leon.Sara Krulwich/The New York TimesFor those familiar with his more debonair roles in movies like “In the Heights” or “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” Hawkins, a Tony nominee for “Six Degrees of Separation,” has so thoroughly transformed himself into a man downtrodden by bad choices and racism that he is virtually unrecognizable. Abdul-Mateen, who won an Emmy for “Watchmen,” intoxicates with his exuberant Booth, both flashy and naïve. We realize, too late, that his character has also been changing, and though his metamorphosis might be slower, it is even more jarring.Under the direction of George C. Wolfe and starring Jeffrey Wright and Yasiin Bey (the rapper formerly known as Mos Def), “Topdog/Underdog” first appeared on Broadway 20 years ago. That year, Parks became the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama for the play, and in 2018, The Times named it the best American play of the previous 25 years.Kenny Leon’s new production of “Topdog/Underdog” was a bit of a risk at a time when young Black playwrights are getting more opportunities on Broadway, and pioneers like Alice Childress and Adrienne Kennedy are finally getting their due. I’ve always considered Booth and Lincoln shaped by the language, swagger and blunted ambition of our earlier hip-hop generation, a sentiment that the show’s sound designer, Justin Ellington, underscores with songs by Pete Rock & CL Smooth, Lupe Fiasco, Kendrick Lamar and Nipsey Hussle.As a result, I wondered how Lincoln and Booth would appear as millennials and in a moment of greater gender fluidity and more nuanced masculinity than the one in which Parks originally conceived them. In an interview this month before one of their performances, Hawkins and Abdul-Mateen described their first encounters with “Topdog/Underdog,” why they think their characters struggles with masculinity still resonate, and how they care for each other as actors and friends in this industry.Unlike the sibling rivalry they’ve perfected onstage, the two men were genuinely excited to be together offstage, often ending their answers with a compliment for their co-star or by finishing each other’s sentences. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.“I felt seen,” Abdul-Mateen said of first encountering the play.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesHawkins said he views “the play as an ode or love letter to Black men.”Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesDid you know each other before the show?YAHYA ABDUL-MATEEN II I used to say that I met Corey once at a party in 2012. But it just might not be true. But I was familiar with Corey for a very long time. I went to Yale, and he went to Juilliard, and you know who’s who in the New York circles.COREY HAWKINS We all knew of each other. Before I got to Juilliard, I knew how many Black folks were in the program. There were only a certain number of us. But this was my first time meeting him. Of course, I knew his work.When did you first learn about “Topdog/Underdog”?HAWKINS I was a junior in high school when the play first premiered at the Public Theater in 2001, so it wasn’t until I was at Juilliard that I came across the show in a student production. A friend of mine, the actor Sheldon Woodley, was directing Amari Cheatom and Johnny Ramey in a version of this play. I was in my first year, wearing what they call “theater blacks” and moving the set pieces around the stage, so I was in the orbit of the play. And then I read it and fell in love with it from there.ABDUL-MATEEN It might have been in 2010 for me. At Berkeley [where he received a bachelor’s degree], a student was doing a director’s showcase of 15-minute scenes. I had one scene from “Othello,” then I did one scene from “Topdog/Underdog,” and I played Booth. It was the first time I read anything contemporary that felt like it was made for me. There was a line from the play that just stayed with me, “She gonna walk in here looking all hot and [expletive], trying to see how much she can get me to sweat, how much she can get me to give her before she gives me mines.” That made me think of my family, my cousins, my people and my friends. And I felt seen, so I said, “Oh, I got to go investigate Booth some more.”Twenty years ago, we had less nuanced conversations about Black masculinity than we are having now. Do you think that changes how we see these characters?HAWKINS I think naturally those differences will be evident because Yahya and I are Black men who live in this era versus 20 years ago. There have been shifts in the conversations around men’s roles and responsibilities, but how I, as an artist, see those things might be different than how my character, Link, sees them. I have to be true to the intentions of what Suzan-Lori Parks wrote, but I do see the play as an ode or love letter to Black men. We can be raw, right, wrong, joyous, funny, heartbreaking and unapologetically Black onstage.ABDUL-MATEEN I think Booth imagines himself as a romantic who knows about women. He’s probably not in the social circles that are speaking about toxic masculinity, but, like a lot of people I know, he fashions himself a gentleman. But, the beautiful thing about this play is that we get to be masculine and also play husband and wife, be silly, immature and vulnerable. We cry, laugh, talk about being hurt in our family, and tell lies designed to make us seem bigger than we are. And then we call each other out when we can see that we’re not succeeding. The test of the play is who comes out on top, so masculinity is always on display within that room.“There are moments in the play where I just get to listen, and I’m just like, “Man, this brother’s killing this right now,” Abdul-Mateen said of Hawkins’s performance.Elliott Jerome Brown Jr. for The New York TimesYour characters’ arcs are subtle and then, especially in Booth’s case, suddenly explosive. How do you prepare for these transformations?ABDUL-MATEEN I make it my responsibility never to see it coming. Because we don’t see our transformations coming in life. As for Booth, I’m trying to keep it positive for as long as possible since he doesn’t know he has a change coming. And as an actor, I also want to stay ahead of the audience so they can be hopeful for as long as possible. And then they’re surprised or caught off guard at the end, which is what Corey refers to as the “three-card monte” trick within the play.HAWKINS With three-card monte, you’re just moving the cards around and trying to react to what’s in front of you. I have to hold off for as long as possible with Link as well. He has to fight the drug that is the cards because there is nothing as powerful as when he picks up those cards one more time. And that’s what begins the downward slippery slope for him. But until then, Link and Booth are just bouncing up against each other, pushing until they can’t anymore. That makes it heartbreaking, tragic and surprising for me every night.Are there any instances in which you’ve been astounded by the other’s performance?ABDUL-MATEEN It happens all the time.HAWKINS All the time.ABDUL-MATEEN Show to show.HAWKINS Moment to moment.ABDUL-MATEEN There are moments in the play where I just get to listen, and I’m just like, “Man, this brother’s killing this right now.”HAWKINS Yeah, at the end of the play, every single show, night after night, I feel like I’m just sitting there watching you give a master class, and I wonder what you will do next. And that’s so exciting, man, because there’s not too many people who can access that range of emotion.Ultimately, this is a tragedy, but I was struck by the handshake and hug that you give each other onstage after the show ends. Why is that important for the audience to see?HAWKINS I know we’re both going through it, so I just think it’s a matter of knowing that I got another brother in the fight. We make it look easy, but it isn’t easy going up there. But, for me, I have to let Lincoln go and literally leave him on the floor. So, when I get up, I’m able to reset.ABDUL-MATEEN I am not Booth, and Corey is not Lincoln. When we take a bow, I am being myself. But, at the beginning, when that curtain goes up, only Corey and I are out there and putting on this show for two and a half hours. I have an obligation to get as close to my character’s truth as possible, and when I want to get that hurt out, I got to give it to Corey’s character. That’s my job. And it’s his job to do the same thing back to me. So, when we take our bows, I get to say, “I appreciate you for taking care of me and that this was a pleasure to do this.” More

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    ‘Topdog/Underdog’ to Star Yahya Abdul-Mateen II and Corey Hawkins

    The 20th anniversary Broadway revival will be directed by Kenny Leon. Previews begin in September at the John Golden Theater.Corey Hawkins and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II will star this fall in a Broadway revival of Suzan-Lori Parks’s Pulitzer-winning comic drama “Topdog/Underdog.”The play, first staged on Broadway in 2002 after an Off Broadway run at the Public Theater, is a portrait of two brothers: One, named Lincoln (Hawkins), is an Abraham Lincoln impersonator and the other, named Booth (Abdul-Mateen), aspires to play three-card monte the way his brother once had.In 2018, The New York Times declared “Topdog/Underdog” the best American play of the previous 25 years. Explaining that choice, the critic Ben Brantley wrote that the play “plies the fine theatrical art of deception to convey the dangers of role-playing in a society in which race is a performance and prison.”Hawkins, 33, has been featured in a string of films, including “In the Heights,” “The Tragedy of Macbeth” and “Straight Outta Compton.” He has two previous Broadway credits, and picked up a Tony nomination in 2017 for his starring role in a revival of “Six Degrees of Separation.”Abdul-Mateen, 35, is best known for his work in the HBO series “Watchmen,” and he recently was featured in the films “Ambulance,” “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Candyman.” “Topdog/Underdog” will be his Broadway debut.The original Broadway production starred Jeffrey Wright and Yasiin Bey, who was known at the time as Mos Def.This 20th anniversary revival, scheduled to run for 16 weeks, is to begin previews Sept. 27 and to open Oct. 20 at the John Golden Theater. It will be directed by Kenny Leon, who in 2014 won a Tony Award for directing a revival of “A Raisin in the Sun.” The producers are David Stone, a lead producer of “Wicked,” as well as LaChanze, Rashad V. Chambers, Marc Platt, Debra Martin Chase and the Shubert Organization.This season is shaping up to be a big one for Parks. In addition to the Broadway revival of “Topdog/Underdog,” the Public Theater on Tuesday said it would stage productions of two new works she has written: “Plays for the Plague Year,” a series of playlets Parks wrote during the early pandemic, and “The Harder They Come,” a musical adaptation of the 1972 film, with a book by Parks and a score that includes songs by Jimmy Cliff. More

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    Alfie Allen Gets in the Zone with Gospel Music and Pineapples

    Known for portraying the luckless Theon Greyjoy on “Game of Thrones,” the British actor shares the items that are helping him prep for his Broadway debut.In the Martin McDonagh play “Hangmen,” set in the 1960s, a mysterious fellow named Mooney turns up out of the blue in a London pub. He describes himself as “vaguely menacing,” but he is also rather coolly charismatic: This is a “spiffy young devil,” as The New York Times’s Ben Brantley put it in his review of the play’s Off Broadway premiere in 2018.It’s a juicy role and you can see why Alfie Allen chose it for his American stage debut — the play is currently in previews at the Golden Theater. And as dark and twisted as Mooney’s psyche is, the part should feel like a vacation compared to Allen’s eight seasons as Theon Greyjoy, one of the most tragic characters on “Game of Thrones.”“There is a freedom to Mooney that can be perceived and performed in so many different ways, such is the brilliance of Martin’s writing,” Allen, who had seen a production at London’s Wyndham’s Theater, said in a recent video chat.Something that came up a lot was music, though Allen laughed when asked if he would ever do a musical. “If somebody thought my musical talents were adequate, then I would definitely give it a thought,” he said. “I think I can sing and I think I can act, but I’m not sure I can dance.”From the New York apartment that’s his home base for the run of the show, Allen went over 10 items he deems essential as he focuses on withstanding the physical demands of a Broadway schedule. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.1. Massage Gun I have quite tight muscles, so I purchased one of those at Christmas in anticipation of being onstage in New York. There’s definitely physical aspects to playing this part in “Hangmen” — his posture is sort of upright and slightly rigid so I need my muscles to be in good working order. Theragun is what a 35 year-old-man needs.2. “Nobody Knows,” T.L. Barrett and the Youth for Christ Choir I usually create a playlist of music for each character I play. I have a portable Marshall speaker — they’re really good quality. I listen to “My Ever Changing Moods” by the Style Council, it just rang true for the character for some reason. And to get out of it I’ve been listening to Pastor T.L. Barrett, whose records kind of resurfaced in the last 10, 15 years. There’s a track called “Nobody Knows” that I’ve been listening to quite a lot.3. Pineapple Chunks I keep them in the fridge when I’m doing anything onstage. The acidity helps with the throat and the vocal cords, to kind of clear them. Plus I like pineapple. Quite nice.4. A Photo of His Daughter I’ve got framed pictures that I take with me when I go away for a shoot or to be onstage. I’ve got one downstairs, one up here. I’ve got loads of photos. [Moves camera to show them.] I’ve brought mostly family pieces, nothing I’ve collected — that’s all at home.5. Apple AirPods If I’m out in the street or on the tube in London — I haven’t done the subway yet in New York — it’s a way of zoning out. I enjoy podcasts but I’m definitely more of a music guy. I don’t really go out to bars and clubs anymore so I just find out about it through other people. Friends will send me music a lot, and just hearing it online, on telly. Spotify is always great.6. A Painting of His Dog My auntie Maureen did a painting of my dog and gave it to me. She asked me for a picture of him — he’s a French bulldog. She’d already done a small sketch for me and then she did a proper oil painting, which is great. Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring my dog here with me so he is in London, being looked after by a family member.7. One-gallon Water Bottle I try to drink a gallon of water every day. It’s not easy but it makes me feel so much better. I’ve been trying to be quite militant about that, especially being onstage. I just saw these water bottles online, they tell you which hour of the day you need to drink your water by. And when we get into tech, we’ll be in the theater for 12, 13 hours of the day. When you’re onstage and you’re waiting around for a long time, you don’t want to keep asking people to get you bottles of water.8. “Just Kids” by Patti Smith “I have only just started reading it. A friend of mine suggested I read it while I was here. I’m definitely a fan of punk and what it represents (or did) but I’m not an expert on Patti Smith’s music. Soon to be, I hope!9. Ian Wright Arsenal Jersey I’m a big Arsenal fan, and Ian Wright was a legendary striker that we had. He was definitely my hero back then. There’s been a bit of resurgence in the interest in classic football tops so I thought I’d dip into that market and I got one from the 1997-98 season. Hopefully I can pass it down to my daughter, when she’s old enough.10. Steaming I’m trying to look after my vocal cords and I got this thing called a DoctorVox — one of the other cast members suggested it to me, and it’s brilliant. It looks like a big glass bowl-ish type thing. Then there’s a contraption you put over part of your face, then breathe in and breathe out. I’m yet to really master it. More

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    Martin McDonagh’s ‘Hangmen’ Will Open on Broadway This Spring

    The production, which was canceled at the start of the pandemic, will try again, this time starring Alfie Allen of “Game of Thrones” fame.“Hangmen” has been saved from the executioner.The dark comedy, by the British playwright Martin McDonagh, will open on Broadway this spring, two years after the production was canceled by its producer as the coronavirus pandemic forced theaters to close.The resurrected production, about an English hangman at the moment Britain banned capital punishment, will now star Alfie Allen, who played Theon Greyjoy on “Game of Thrones,” as a mysterious visitor to a bar run by the hangman. The hangman will be played by David Threlfall, a Tony nominee for “The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby.”The play is now scheduled to begin previews on April 8 and to open on April 21 at the Golden Theater.In 2020, “Hangmen,” with a slightly different cast, had completed its 13th preview performance, also at the Golden, and was a week away from opening when Broadway theaters closed.Eight days into the shutdown, producers announced that they were canceling the production, saying, “We do not have the economic resources to be able to continue to pay the theater owners, cast and crew through this still undefined closure period.” The show was the first, and one of the few, to make such a move.“I’m not saying I had any wisdom, but when people were saying we’d be back open in four weeks, I never believed that,” the lead producer, Robert Fox, said this week. “We were still being charged rent, and all sorts of expenses we didn’t have the money to cover. I assumed that was the end of ‘Hangmen’ on Broadway.”But the play was given new life by the U.S. government: It was awarded a $5.2 million Shuttered Venue Operators Grant, and was then granted an extension for its use of that money until June 30, 2022. Fox said that a combination of the federal aid, and investors returning money they had received from an insurance claim, “meant we had enough to put the show on, and hopefully to be able to support it in its early days, if it needs support.”Much had to be rethought: During the last two years, one of the play’s producers, Elizabeth I. McCann, died; several of the play’s lead actors became unavailable for personal or professional reasons; and the set was dismantled. But Fox said he wanted to try again, in large part because of his fondness for the work of McDonagh, a four-time Tony nominee whose other plays include “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and whose films include “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.”From left: Jeremy Crutchley, Tracie Bennett, Mark Addy, Richard Hollis, John Horton and Ryan Pope in the production of “Hangmen” that was slated to open in 2020. The play will reopen with several new cast members.Sara Krulwich/The New York Times“I’m a huge Martin fan — I think he’s a true original, and a brilliant writer, and this is the third play of Martin’s I will have produced on Broadway,” Fox said. “I don’t think anybody’s putting it back on because they think they’re going to make a lot of money, but they believe it’s a wonderful play of Martin’s, and hopefully people want to see a dark mystery comedy and enjoy themselves.”“Hangmen” began its life in London, at the Royal Court Theater, and then, following a West End run, had an Off Broadway production at the Atlantic Theater Company, where The New York Times critic Ben Brantley called it “criminally enjoyable.” Matthew Dunster has directed each production, and will do so again on Broadway; the Broadway production will feature Tracie Bennett (“End of the Rainbow”) as the hangman’s wife. More