World's Stage's Behanding Is Probably Better Than It Has A Right To Be

This past Saturday, The World's Stage Theatre Company opened the third part of its Martin McDonagh Theatre Festival with a production of A Behanding in Spokane. The offbeat comedy met with an overwhelming response its opening night. It's really reassuring to see comedy like this received so well. It's offbeat comedy that gets very, very dark in places. The cast here is populated by characters who are each psycho-emotionally twisted in some way. Traditional logic says that there needs to be someone entirely sympathetic for the audience to relate to in order for a comedy like this to work. Clearly as witnessed by opening night of Behanding, audiences are a lot more sophisticated than traditional logic will allow for. 

The production is directed by Robby McGhee and Mara McGhee of TIM: The Improvised Musical. Their senses of humor mesh well with MCDonagh's in a staging the moves swiftly across the stage without intermission. 

Zack McLain plays Carmichael – a racsit gentleman who has been traveling across the country for many years looking for his dismembered left-hand. He finds himself in a hotel room awaiting the delivery of a severed hand by a bickering couple. Originally from Green Bay, this is likely McLain's first appearance on the Milwaukee stage. If I heard Director Robbie McGhee correctly, McLain actually moved here to be in the show. Whether or not that's a fair characterization of his reasons for coming here, his performance in this show is not a bad reason for him to move to Milwaukee. McLain has a very sharp and crisp wit about him onstage and a really clever sense of comic timing that serves the role well. It's not an easy thing to make messed-up racist seem lovably comedic. He has to come across as both tragically stupid AND utterly dangerous. McLain's humanity in the role makes an enjoyably charming character to spend a little time in a hotel room with.

Aaron Phifer and Liz Faraglia play Marilyn and Toby--the couple that brings the hand to Carmichael. Phifer is an impressively tattooed African-American gentleman with a genuine comic talent. The character is comically flawed morally in a way that Phifer clearly has a good time bringing to the stage. That fun feels effortlessly transferred to the audience in a way that shows a great deal of promise. UWM senior Faraglia has shown impressive comic talent in UWM's Mr. Marmalade--a twisted comedy in its own right. What I'd neglected to mention until I saw it in her bio here is the fact the Faraglia is a double major in dance and theatre. The two disciplines work together beautifully here. Faraglia is irresistibly fun to watch as she engages in the physical comedy of the role. Her physical expressiveness in the comedy even extends into casual dialogue. That she can do this without upstaging the rest of the action or calling too much attention to herself shows a captivating flair for stage comedy. 

Martin McMahon Bergquist rounds of the role of hotel employee Mervin. Like everyone else in a cast, he is mentally imbalanced. But unlike just about everyone else Mervin doesn't fit a single stereotype real well. Carmichael is a messed-up psychopath. Toby is a morally questionable gentleman caught up in a situation beyond his control. Sadly, McDonagh seems to be playing Marilyn as the stereotypically intellectually vacant girl. (Though we've seen this stereotype far took often in pop culture, Faraglia plays it cleverly enough to make the character quite a bit deeper than the stereotype.) 

Bergquist's challenge is different. He needs to bring to the stage the simple complexities of someone who really doesn't seem to be all that concerned with his own well-being. The character is a bit sadistic and places. The character is a suicidal in places. The character is deeply messed up on a psychological level. But he's only a bad person in that he's completely ambivalent about everything. We get to see bits and pieces of that play through and ways that could be diametrically opposed the comedy were they not delivered with the right sense of humor. Bergquist clearly has the right sense of humor to tackle the challenges of the character. The character gets mixed up in everything in a way that is largely his own doing. And it's a great deal of fun to watch him weave through to central plot points as the soul of the crazy chaos of it all.

As well as it is written, A Behanding In Spokane really has no business being as funny as it is here. Bits of it are quite weak and the story as a whole lacks the cohesion it would need to be a truly inspired comedy. Maybe McDonagh simply didn't channel the right anger into it. It's solidly good comedy, it's just not brilliant. The fact that it plays like brilliant comedy in this production speaks to the magic of a talented group of actors performing under what feels like inspired direction.

The World's Stage's A Behanding In Spokane runs for two more performances: Friday, February 1st at 7:30pm and Sunday, February 3rd at 6:00 pm. (Consider it a delightfully bizarre Super Bowl pre-game show if you like . . . this is going to be a lot more fun than the game anyway. Trust me . . . ) The show is being staged at the Milwaukee Fortress on 100 A. East Pleasant Street. For ticket reservations, visit Brown Paper Tickets.com.