Give them a hand for ‘Spokane’
Aplay whose characters were so outrageous that you nearly had to like them was previewed Thursday at Civic Center Music Hall, 201 N Walker.
The Oklahoma City Theatre Company version of “A Behanding in Spokane” was staged in Civic Center’s basement CitySpace Theatre. The disturbing but wildly entertaining black comedy, with the title that sounds like beheading, is by English-Irish author Martin McDonagh. It won us over with a bawdy satire of American racism, political correctness and violence that has become commonplace, a new kind of pornography.
Veteran actor Don Taylor was wonderfully direct, matter-of-fact and almost appealingly despicable as Carmichael, clad in a film noir-like trench coat, gun in pocket. Taylor came across as a man carrying a torch, not for a woman, but to revenge himself on the world and the “hillbillies” who took his hand in childhood, 27 years ago.
A virulent racist, as well as vengeful and violence prone, Taylor’s Carmichael was a villain who also was easy to relate to and appreciate for his sheer tell-it-likeit-is candor. Leonard Jackson was nicely nuanced as Toby, a kind of “crybaby” Black Panther, and Kaylan Ferrell conveyed both the naivete and feminine wiles of his white girlfriend well. Especially comic were the arguments they had with each other, handcuffed to a floor radiator, while Carmichael went to check if the hand they want to sell him is really his.
Adding to the absurdity was David Burkhardt as the hotel’s receptionist, distracted by his computer from calling police, and fantasies of what he’d do in a school massacre. Often feeling he gets no respect, a la Rodney Dangerfield, Burkhardt as the boxer shorts-wearing receptionist, came across as both highly amusing and a menace in his own right. Ironically saving the day was not the cavalry, but Carmichael’s mother, referred to only indirectly, whose browbeating on the telephone puts him off violence, at least temporarily.
Briskly directed by Kory Kight-Pagala, with no intermission, and filled with racist epithets and four-letter words that we soon ignore, OKCTC’s “Behanding” is not for the easily offended. But the first offering of the theater group’s 19th season is highly recommended for those who just want to be entertained.