Pierrepoint tells the story of Albert Pierrepoint, an official state hangman. The play is set on the eve of his final hanging; this, combined with the fact that hanging is about to be outlawed, leads Pierrepoint to look back on his life as part of the judicial process, as he likes to call it. He reminisces about hanging Nazi war criminals, discusses the right way to hang someone and talks about the issues his part-time profession has created in his relationship with his wife Anne.
This is a cold character that sees nothing wrong with taking a man’s life, given that it is his duty. Time and time again he repeats that the details of a man’s conviction are irrelevant to him – the convict’s innocence or guilt also being irrelevant – and that he merely carries out orders without question. I found the character highly unlikeable and impossible to empathise with, despite Martin Oldfield’s usually very accomplished performance. The character is so intransigent at the beginning that when he finally considers the possibility that what he’s been doing was wrong all along, Oldfield’s delivery wasn’t enough to make me feel real sympathy for a man that apparently had never before taken the trouble of thinking about the moral implications of his job. Moreover, although Oldfield is generally very confident, at times when he needs to be angry he becomes less convincing. Oldfield’s full potential for nuance only truly becomes obvious when he is discussing Anne and at these moments his sensitivity is highly touching.
The script is very well written and engaging; a couple of instances of dark humour stand out, as well as the rather vivid description of what you hear when a body’s hung. The final man that Pierrepoint is to execute is on stage all the while that Pierrepoint narrates his story. Although this is a genius touch in terms of the script, it didn’t actually carry the weight it ought to in the performance itself. The convict is supposed to be a constant reminder of the horrors underlying the protagonist’s narrative, but in fact it was very easy to forget that the actor playing the convict was on stage at all.
Overall, this performance was polished and well thought-out. Although worth a watch, I don’t think I can handle hearing more about the right way to hang a body again.
