Adam Driver as superstar Strings McCrane seems to loom over the cramped set in a black ten-gallon hat, as he screams at a personal assistant who is about half his size, smashes his guitar, strips off his clothes for a massage, and then beds the masseuse, all in the first scene of this revival of Kenneth Lonergan’s 2016 play. For Driver fans, or at least his fanciers, this first half hour of “Hold On To Me Darling” could probably be the whole show, and they’d leave with a satisfying memory.

But the play goes on for 150 minutes more. 

Despite a fine cast and some good laughs, three hours is too long for what “Hold On To Me Darling” winds up being, which is a strange, slight if appealing comedy that strains to be pointed and poignant.

In that first scene, Strings, a wildly popular country music singer-songwriter who has become a movie star as well,  has just learned of his mother’s death. Distraught that his mother seemed never to approve of him, because he hasn’t settled down, he has decided to move back to his small, non-descript hometown in Tennessee and try to live a simple life. 

If the basic premise sounds somewhat similar to Horton Foote’s “Tender Mercies,” the tones are wildly different.

There are plenty of clues throughout the play that Strings’ country boy humility is an act, a celebrity game he might not be entirely aware he is playing. His attitude is both laughable and sometimes laugh-inducing.  While getting the massage in the hotel room, his masseuse Nancy (Heather Burns) admires his muscles; Strings demurs: “I got four trainers. I don’t do shit. I just lie there and let em move me around.”

 In the next scene (each scene appears swiftly thanks to rotating sets meticulously designed by Walt Spangler) Strings is now in the cluttered home of his half-brother Duke  (CJ Wilson.) There he announces plans to give up his career and work at Ernie’s, the local feed store. Duke, who used to work at Ernie’s, says Strings is insane: “you gotta stand at the counter all day long while folks come in asking you for hog feed, chicken feed, cat food, dog food….” His list goes on endlessly, a classic comic  routine that gets the laugh it deserves. 

But in the third scene, we’re at his mother’s funeral, and Strings runs into Essie (Adelaide Clemens) his second cousin once removed, who has had her own tragedy: Her Daddy and her husband died “round the same time.”

“That the most terrible thing I ever heard of,” Strings responds, “losin’ both Daddy and husband at the same time.”

“Well, they were drag racing”

“Drag racing? They were drag racing each other?”

“Daddy just loved drag racing…”

How can this be intended as anything but comic? But such moments,  which come at the characters’ expense, undermine what is apparently Lonergan’s serious effort  at a character study – not just of Strings, but, by extension, of America itself, especially the power it bestows on its celebrities, and the corrupted values that this reflects.

“There is a sick and troubled nation out there looking to you and everybody like you for guidance,” says Nancy, who figures heavily in the plot. She is surely earnest in her view (although it’s part of her scheming to tap into his wealth and privilege), but this seems a clear and ironic comment by the playwright.  Strings talks more than once about “the moral rot infestin’ the United States,” and there’s an implication he might at least subconsciously see himself as part of it. He frequently expresses guilt about the way he uses people, but a remark by Essie, a kindergarten teacher who feels like the moral center of the play, puts his behavior in perspective: “Strings’s Mama used to say that bein’ ashamed of yourself after repeatedly doing exactly what you please is a very inexpensive virtue.”

Director Neil Pepe, who also helmed the original production, tries to navigate between the comedy and the drama, which for most of the play is taken up with Strings’ interactions with the two women, Nancy and Essie. But there is also a surprise character who makes an appearance in the last fifteen minutes that seems to come out of nowhere, and throws the play off-balance. In the most charitable interpretation, these last minutes exist to imply a hole in Strings’ heart that he tried but has been unable to fill with his celebrity.

If the playwright is intending “Hold On To Me, Darling” to be a comment on American celebrity culture, the message is mixed, not least because the production is using a celebrity to charge $400 for Off-Broadway tickets. Nevertheless, the tickets were almost all sold out long before opening night – which is its own comment on celebrity culture.

Hold On To Me Darling
Lucille Lortel Theater through December 22
Running time: Three hours with one intermission
Tickets: $249 – $449. Lottery on TodayTix: $40
Written by Kenneth Lonergan
Directed by Neil Pepe
Scenic design by Walt Spangler, costume design by Suttirat Larlarb and Lizzie Donelan, lighting design by Tyler Micoleau and sound design by David Van Tiegham.
Cast: Adam Driver as Strings McCrane, Heather Burns as Nancy, Adelaide Clemens as Essie, Keith Nobbs as Jimmy, CJ Wilson as Duke, and Frank Wood as Mitch.