A Behanding in Spokane
Opening Night: March 4, 2010
Closing: June 6, 2010
Theater: Gerald Schoenfeld
Take a man searching for his missing hand, two con artists out to make a few hundred bucks and an overly curious hotel clerk, and the result is A Behanding in Spokane, a hilarious black comedy by Martin McDonagh, the author of The Pillowman, The Beauty Queen of Leenane, The Lonesome West, The Lieutenant of Inishmore and The Cripple of Inishmaan.
BUY TICKETSREAD THE REVIEWS:
March 5, 2010
Christopher Walken has an eccentric charisma, his hangdog, sorrowful demeanor spiked with a twisted kind of charm. The mix is a perfect fit for Martin McDonagh’s particular brand of macabre comedy. That Walken is the main attraction of the playwright’s new "A Behanding in Spokane" is obvious — the other night, the audience erupted into guffaws every time the star opened his mouth. But the performance is more subtle than this reflexive response indicates: There’s a hauntingly off-kilter poetry to Walken. It almost distracts you from how contrived McDonagh’s writing is.
READ THE REVIEW
March 4, 2010
If you’re looking to fill the role of an A-grade "cracker motherfucker," to use the parlance of Martin McDonagh, then Christopher Walken is your go-to guy. Imagine the actor’s hidden-wristwatch tale from "Pulp Fiction" bulked up into a freestanding narrative and you have an approximate idea of "A Behanding in Spokane," a piece of virtuoso storytelling fashioned out of a slim anecdote. There’s no broader theme, no veiled subtext and no underlying allegory. The playwright makes no pretense of doing anything beyond spinning a good yarn. Entertaining as it is, however, the black comedy remains insubstantial.
READ THE REVIEW
September 24, 2009
There’s enough energy in the first act of "Fela!" to short-circuit Con Ed. It spills over from the stage and into the orchestra seats, boundless and joyous: This is as close as Broadway gets to fully immersive theater.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 4, 2010
If you are going to put creepy – and more than a little crazy – on stage, Christopher Walken is your main man. The actor is the spark plug who jump-starts "A Behanding in Spokane," Martin McDonagh’s slight slice of macabre double-dealing that opened Thursday at Broadway’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre.
READ THE REVIEW
March 4, 2010
Bottom Line: A brilliant cast elevates this profane shaggy-dog comedy to wildly entertaining proportions.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 4, 2010
When blood is shed in a Martin McDonagh play, the audience always laughs—and usually gasps. Mr. McDonagh is partial to comic violence, and in "A Behanding in Spokane" he lets it rip. I mustn’t be too specific, this being a play full of grisly surprises, but there’s one thing about which I can be absolutely precise: "A Behanding in Spokane" is the funniest new play to open in New York since I started writing this column.
READ THE REVIEWMarch 4, 2010
The ferociously gifted Anglo-Irish writer Martin McDonagh has cited American authors and filmmakers from Flannery O’Connor to Martin Scorsese as influences. So you might expect these artists to inform A Behanding in Spokane (**½ out of four), his first play set in the USA.
READ THE REVIEW
March 4, 2010
Sometimes, in one of theater’s more undervalued romantic story lines, an actor meets a set and — flash! — chemistry happens. The opening image of Christopher Walken in Martin McDonagh’s “Behanding in Spokane” is such a perfect, demented marriage of character and environment that you can’t help grinning like a fool.
READ THE REVIEW
March 11, 2010
It’s a universal superstition among the greasepaint set: Never, ever, say “Macbeth.” Don’t recite any of the tragedy’s lines. Because if you quote Macbe—sorry, “the Scottish Play,” you doom your own production to bad luck—from falling scenery to onstage heart attacks. See, that play about the regicidal Thane of Cawdor is cursed. Accordingly, the cast and crew of Bill Cain’s sharp-witted if overstuffed Equivocation are probably on guard: Their comedy-drama speculates on how and why Shakespeare wrote you-know-what.
READ THE REVIEW