Comic horror
Catch this hand before it's gone: Behanding at Spokane will keep you up withfright laughs
Andrew Weems as Carmichael and Emily Neves as MarilynPhoto by Jann Whaley
Behanding at Spokane runs through Sunday.
Emily Neves, left, as Marilyn, Andrew Weems as Carmichael and Sean-MichaelBowles as TobyPhoto by Jann Whaley
Chris Hutchison, left, as Mervyn and Andrews Weems as CarmichaelPhoto by Jann Whaley
In a play on a set that involves a pile of severed hands littering the floor for much if its duration, you might not expect a lot of laughs. But you'd be wrong in the case of A Behanding in Spokane, the Martin McDonagh one-act currently running at the Alley Theatre.
Like all McDonagh's work, or at least all that I've encountered, the gore is mixed in equal parts with the absurd, and what results is the hilarious. (McDonagh was also behind In Bruges, the Colin Farrell and Ralph Fiennes-starring film about two hit men in boss-ordered exile in the beautiful Belgian city of castles and fog. He won an Oscar in 2006 for an equally dark short film, Six Shooter.)
As the playwright said of his Lieutenant of Inshmore: "We're all cruel, aren't we? We're all extreme in one way or another at times, and that's what drama, since the Greeks, has dealt with . . . There have to be moments when you glimpse something decent, something life-affirming even in the most twisted character. That's where the real art lies."
The play, a nearly two hour-long intermission-less one-act, is as uncomfortable in moments as it is funny. It deals with a one-handed, murderous semi-lunatic on a 27-year-long search for his missing hand, which he claims was cut off and stolen from him as a boy in Spokane. (It's unclear whether his story checks out.) He ends up with a reject, ancient aborigine hand sold to him by a fumbling, biracial, pot-dealing couple, and the unwelcome involvement of the still-more-bumbling "front desk guy" from the seedy motel where the action takes place.
Yet through the violence and the ever-increasing weirdness, there's something endearing about each of the characters, even as they, in turns, save one another and throw each other to the wolves.
A Behanding runs until Sunday at the Alley's Neuhaus theatre, and if you haven't seen it already, I recommend you go. I saw it with my mother Sunday evening, and it was her second time.
Sure, my dreams that night were a little frightening — but man, were they funny.
