Adam Driver in “Hold on to Me Darling”

Adam Driver knows how to make fun of himself. We know that. And now the star proves that there are seven shows a week (and three hours per show) at Lucille Lortel. I should rephrase: “making fun” and “star” are reductive. I agree with my colleague Matt Zoller Seitz that Driver's fame is well deserved and that he is one of the rare cases where a true weirdo (my highest praise) was seen for his talent And Because of his madness, he has been able to do greater and greater things and has remained both extremely talented and strange. Seitz writes that Driver is becoming known for a certain type of role – “colorful, difficult” characters in plays “with very strong stylistic signatures” that are close to camp and could come across as “ridiculously flowery” to many other actors. Aside from his literal size, he's not afraid of it large. He picks up a film as if it were an old carpet and shamelessly beats the dust out of it. When an actor like Driver comes on stage, it's not tourism; it is a homecoming.

So it turns out it's the piece he's playing. Kenneth Lonergans Hold me tight, darlingwhich premiered at the Atlantic Theater in 2016 (starring Timothy Olyphant as Driver), tells the story of Strings McCrane, a megastar country singer who returns to Tennessee after the death of his mother – and finds himself completely out of control. Although Strings is “the third biggest crossover star in the history of country music” (and one who has also made it into the film industry), his current project is “that goddamn space movie” directed by someone with the hilarious name Werner ), he always felt like a disappointment to his rugged Appalachian mother. All he really wants, he sniffs to a fawning, starry-eyed masseuse named Nancy (the very funny Heather Burns), is “to be the person my mom always wanted me to be.” Thus begins perhaps the most self-centered quest for self-humiliation that has ever existed on stage. “This isn’t about me,” Strings thunders to his assistant Jimmy (Keith Nobbs), who is loyal to the point of extreme social awkwardness – but not an idiot. “Seems so,” Jimmy says after a long pause.

Neil Pepe, who also directed the series' premiere at Atlantic, is smart to lean into the comedy. Strings is a giant toddler in a 30-gallon pair of jeans and tight black jeans—his tantrums, his relationships with women, his misty looks that wander into what he thinks is poetry (“It's all red,” he sings along a woman he tries to seduce after spilling coffee on her hand “Red like a rose in the shape of a hand”) – they are all monumentally absurd. Lonergan consciously treads into territory that would be difficult for a director or actor to take if they took themselves too seriously. But one reason Strings Driver fits like custom couture is Driver's ability to perform a kind of alchemy with silliness and seriousness. He can let off steam and act to the extreme at the same time, and he knows that the secret to being funny is when a character wants to be anything but. Do you want to make people laugh? Have a really bad day. Experience the worst day of your life.

That's pretty much what Strings does as he smashes Hulk from one terrible decision to the next. His tragic flaw is going all out whenever something makes him feel a little good, so of course he gets involved with Nancy – the hotel masseuse Jimmy brought along just to lighten the load on his boss – because she coddles him and cooed over him and covered him in oil and told him that his hit song “Hold on to Me Darling” made her “sob like a little girl.” I don't know how the first act began in 2016, but for Adam Driver to strip down to his boxers in the first ten minutes while another actor giggles and gasps at the sight of his massive body – “Someone definitely did their part.” . “Gym, darling,” shrieks Nancy – is well-calibrated satire. Burns is a real looker (even more so when Nancy's freak shows up), and Driver plays everything in perfect pitch – with a murmured “Thank you, ma'am.” incorrect Humility and a face as straight as a two-by-four.

However, the joke about Strings' huge, self-sabotaging ego can only be sustained for so long, even by very appealing actors. Although Hold me tight, darling keeps hitting the smaller laughs, but loses a lot of momentum shortly after the break. Three hours is a long time to watch a well-meaning narcissist dig his own grave over and over again, and Lonergan never finds the key to making his piece more than an extended character study: Watch Strings Get a Massage receive. See Strings drinking PBRs with his brother Duke (CJ Wilson, with a biker mustache that really takes me back to rural Virginia, is excellent in the role). At the funeral home, watch Strings fall in love with his gentle-hearted cousin Essie (Adelaide Clemens, also a badass – and hey, she's just his “second cousin twice removed”). Watch Strings blow up his entire life and shop at a local feed and hardware store. See Strings never say no. See how strings run – from Nancy, from Essie, from Jimmy, from his lawyers, from almost everything.

Every scene is well crafted and it feels like Lonergan had fun writing it (I personally enjoyed collecting all the ways Strings and Duke say Jesus Christ: “Jesus Christ in a barbershop in downtown Memphis !” “Jesus Christ on the Tour”) de France!” “Jesus Christ in a hand-woven dashiki!” But in the larger arc, something is missing, particularly as the piece moves into the later movements – a sense of the need for more meaningful stakes, the go beyond the possible redemption of a sad, spoiled socialite who is an emotional bull in every figurative china shop he enters. Frank Wood enters the proceedings at the eleventh hour, playing Strings' estranged father in a gentle, understated performance, and it's clear that here's the hook on which Lonergan hopes to hang his hat to his deeper ambitions – but the scene does not rebalance the scales. For Hold me tight, darling To fit together in a way that takes us beyond satirical laughter, the moment that Driver and Wood share must sit alone on one side of the seesaw while the rest of the piece sits on the other, and it must outweigh everything. Here, both actors are more than up to the task at hand, but their climactic encounter feels, dramaturgically, like just another episode.

Pepe and Lonergan could actually find themselves in a quandary. Play up the farce and you may miss the opportunity to help the piece find greater meaning. Go too serious and risk instant scorn from an audience all too ready to get their claws out for everything Strings stands for. Nancy calls him “baby men” – a sweet endearment that's also true – and when it comes to stories about baby men, it's not exactly a seller's market these days. What makes this film work as well as it does is the top notch cast of actors with an exceptional driver behind the wheel.

Hold me tight, darling is at the Lucille Lortel Theater through December 22nd.