Usually, when the centerpiece of a show involves a motel room where a full can of gas with a lighted candle stuck in the spout illuminates a floor littered with chopped-off hands, you’d think something interesting might be going on.
And you’d mostly be right during the goofily gory A Behanding in Spokane by playwright Martin McDonagh. This production at Blank Canvas Theatre, under the direction of Andrew Keller, brings out the cringe-inducing features of this script while managing to create a couple characters who, if you look past their scuzzy personas, are worth encountering.
The motel room is rented by scumbag Carmichael (Keith Kornacjik), who is missing his left hand. Turns out, he was relieved of it a few years before by a gang of rednecks who held his arm on railroad tracks as a choo-choo came by. And to rub it in, they waved goodbye to the screaming Carmichael with his own hand.
Ever since, he’s been on the hunt for his displaced digits, placing ads offering a $500 reward for such information. But so far, he’s only come up with jack-offs trying to nab the loot by passing off counterfeit amputated hands as Carmichael’s, including a couple kids’ hands. And he carries those hands with him, stuffed into a briefcase.
Did I mention this is a dark comedy? These kinds of monstrous doings are the stock in trade for McDonagh, and the four characters he creates are of a piece. Also occupying the room are Marilyn (Jillian Mesaros) and her Black boyfriend Toby (Christian “CJ” Hall), the guy Carmichael shot at. At time, the front desk guy Mervyn shows up to check on suspicious activities.
Toby and Marilyn, who are lovers, are the latest two-bit con artists trying to fool Carmichael and that’s where this one-act hits the skids a bit. They are working against a difficult obstacle since the actor who was cast to play Toby had to leave the production a day before opening.
As a result, at this performance Hall was working with book in hand, which limited his ability to create a believable character. To his credit, Hall fashioned some agile line readings and kept the pace of the show moving, but the vaccuum where his full character should have been affected not just his performance but all the other actors and the piece as a whole.
That said, Kornajcik establishes Carmichael as the surly sort you cross the street to avoid, and Mesaros trembles and rages with style in her spot-on portrayal of Marilyn.
Good as they are, the show is almost stolen by Daniel Telford as the spacey front-desk drone Mervyn. In addition to his verbal fencing with Carmichael, he launches into a borderless diatribe about monkeys which he manages to make almost sensible in a thoroughly nonsensical way.
Trouble is, playwright McDonagh creates a comical standoff he doesn’t quite finish, so the play meanders to an odd ending that isn’t consistent with what’s gone before. Perhaps it proves that it’s hard to top a play that starts with a gas can bomb and a collection of loose hands.
In any case, it’s an interesting piece that will only get better, one assumes, as performer Hall gets his feet under him.
A Behanding in Spokane
Through June 8 at Blank Canvas Theatre, 78th Street Studios, 1305 West 78th St., Suite 211, 440-941-0458, blankcanvastheatre.com.
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Christine Howey
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