Invitation to a Behanding

Review: A Behanding in Spokane
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre, New York
March 10, 2010

Martin McDonagh has given us quite a roster of Irish plays, from the risible The Beauty Queen of Leenane to last year's revival of the intimate The Cripple of Inishmaan. His first American play, premiering in New York with four American actors, is the first time he's broken from the plonkers of rural Irish towns--and alas, the first time his writing is half-handed.

He crafts a vengeful Mephistopheles in the character of Carmichael (Christopher Walken), on the hunt for a hand severed off in his youth. On the train tracks, he recalls. We're never sure of the veracity of that tall tale, nor how off-kilter Walken's next line reading will sound. Walken's performance is a cauldron of mischief, malice, and pathos swirling together. Fascinating at every moment with him, the show suffers whenever he's off-stage.

Carmichael traps two bumbling crooks, who sought to con him with an aborigine hand, inside his decaying hotel room with a gas can soon to ignite. Alas, McDonagh's usual duplicity doesn't spring forth here: the prisoners tossing shoes (and extraneous hands) at the gas can sacrifices tension for slapstick. Anthony Mackie, as the crook digging himself further into lies, scores many laughs but through over-exertion; Zoe Kazan is miscast as his shrill sidekick. Sam Rockwell at least cloaks his dim-witted but slyly suspicious hotel manager some of the ambiguous bizarreness that perfumes Walken.

McDonagh has proven a master of manipulation in the past. By only crafting one (and a half) compelling parts out of four, the play tilts entirely toward Walken. His mother registers more as the unheard half of a telephone conversation, bringing out all Carmichael's savagery, than do the thieves. The playwright's best work feeds off power struggles--little guy overtaking big fish--but Carmichael never risks losing his patriarchal command.

Jipped, too, are we of a bloody explosive showdown, like in The Lieutenant of Inishmore, or gruesome revelation a la The Pillowman. His bent for profanity and racial epiphets runs stouter than Guinness, and is one of the few tricks that really riles us. Right now the ovations belong to Walken, but I hope that in his future American efforts, we'll have cause to give McDonagh a hand.