Martin McDonagh's A Behanding in Spokane is a violent comedy with a twisted logic that benefits from the fast-paced production it gets at GableStage in South Florida. Producing artistic director Joseph Adler has won two regional Carbonell Awards for directing McDonagh's works (The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Pillowman) at this Coral Gables venue, and his rapid-fire staging of this play draws lots of laughs from the audience. The firing starts almost immediately with a shot into the dark (which doesn't go unnoticed by the desk clerk), but there's little gore here, no big budget for fake blood a la Inishmore. The behanding, after all, occurred 47 years ago in Washington State, and one-handed Carmichael has spent the years since then traveling the country in an effort to reclaim the hand from the "hillbillies" he says caused the separation.
How does one go about finding a disembodied hand? Place an ad, of course, and that's how Toby and Marilyn end up in Carmichael's seedy hotel room (set and lighting getting the job done) in an unidentified city, a couple of young drug dealers looking to bilk him of a little money. They deliver a hand, the wrong hand in several ways.
Lots of big laughs and performances make this contrived world go 'round. Dennis Creaghan delivers a Carmichael of menace, hurt and skewed logic. Marckenson Charles and Jackie Rivera are the small-time schemers, Marilyn just a bit slow to appreciate Tody's plans. And Erik Fabregat, as Mervyn of the front desk, brings heart to the procedings with his handling of a lovely, lonely, scary monologue.
