When initially hearing of A Behanding in Spokane, I didn’t know what it was about. All I 
knew was that Christopher Walken, a famous actor and Academy Award winner, was playing the main role and I wanted to see it. From outside the theatre, the pictures seemed to look like this was going to be a serious play with a serious plot line. Though some parts of the play, in my opinion, shouldn’t be taken lightly, I was wrong.
A Behanding in Spokane is a comedy about a man, Mr. Carmichael (Walken), who has a
right hand, and a stub for a left hand. For the majority of his life, he’s been searching for his missing hand which was taken away from him by some hillbillies many years ago. He says that they took him and held his hand over the train tracks, waiting for the train to come. When finally the train rode over his hand, they took the detached appendage and from a distance, waved back at him with his own hand. He gets very upset telling this story, but the audience can’t help but laugh.
Mr. Carmichael has two young people, Toby and Marilyn, trapped in his hotel room while goes in search for the han
d they swear is in their apartment. Their journey in the play is filled with cursing and screaming. If I got a penny for every time Toby called Mr. Carmichael a “motherfucking one handed cracker”, I’d be rich. Each second that goes by in the play, something gets worse. First Mr. Carmichael leaves them in the room with a tank of oil and a lit candle. When trying to put out the flame, they find a trunk full of detached hands. It gets worse and worse, but the plotline just gets funnier and funnier.
My favorite character by far was Mervyn, played by Sam Rockwell. He’s the receptionist at the hotel, but hates being called one. He has a grudge against Toby, the black guy who he thinks left him standing in the snow after a speed deal with no pants and sixty dollars short. He 
has his own monologue in which he tells random stories from his past which shows something about his character. The final scene between Mervyn and Carmichael, though impossibly hilarious, is very moving in its own way. Mervyn is misunderstood and lonely in the world, and I believe Mr. Carmichael is the same way.
Carmichael finally finds his hand in the case of hands he had been carrying around all along. He can’t do anything with that hand but it’s his and he wanted it. I think the fact that he kept saying that it belongs to him shows a deeper message in the very comedic show.
Martin McDonagh did a lovely job in combining the dark, kind of disturbing side of the play with the humorous. Everything was placed perfectly, the words, the outbursts. The set really carried the piece even further, showing a dirty, run down hotel room. The curtain was also ragged and looked like it had been in an old theatre for years.
The acting was phenomenal and I couldn’t have asked for a better experience.
A Behanding in Spokane
Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre
May 1, 2010
Marina B. Nebro
