Sneaky, menacing and funny are descriptions that come up more than once in Martin McDonagh’s Hangmen, but not one of the three words quite does justice to this irresistibly pitch-black comedy, opening tonight at the Golden Theatre on Broadway.

Then again, justice has very little to do with what goes on in this deliciously wicked tale of bloodstained propriety and revenge, state-sanctioned or otherwise. Set mostly in a Lancashire pub in the mid-1960s during the last days of England’s legal capital punishment, the Olivier Award-winning Hangmen resurrects not only an era of U.K. history but the playwright’s early fascination with very dark impulses.

And no one does dark impulses with as much comedic flare – yes, it’s sneaky, menacing and funny – as McDonagh at full tilt.

Directed with deadly assurance by Matthew Dunster,