The 2015 production received mixed reviews from critics.
Michael Billington and
Susannah Clapp, both writing in
The Guardian, directed praise at the performances but criticized the dialogue for being overly-stylized and Three's characterization for being single-note.
The Arts Desk described the ambiguity of the play as "frustrating and annoying" and said that without a resolution the show felt more like a lecture than a performance.
Londonist agreed, characterizing the back-and-forth dialogue in the first third of the play as "painful" and saying that the play's core conceit was thought-provoking but lacked drama. The
Financial Times was also critical, praising the performances and the play for evoking a "Kafkaesque" feeling but describing the precise dialogue as being at odds with the vagueness of the story. By contrast,
WhatsOnStage was more positive, noting that the play had a surprising amount of humor and that the set was evocative.
The New York Times praised Jean-Baptiste's performance and concluded that the play was potent and timely, while the
Evening Standard wrote that tucker green's script covered "more than most other writers could manage in double" the time.
HuffPost was extremely positive, praising the set design, the performances, and the overall mystery of the play. Michael Pearce, a theater researcher at the
University of Exeter, situates race as the central theme of
hang, noting that Three is described as a Black woman in the script and that the unnamed perpetrator is implied to be white. Pearce draws connections between Three's anger throughout the piece and the concept of "Black rage," writing that
hang is part of a tradition of Black art focused on anger. Three's rage, Pearce says, is signified by "a slight, nervous tremble in her hand" that reveals the crime's trauma as being present even years after the crime. == References ==