Prague, Cinoherní klub - A Behanding in Spokane
Review by Vladimír Mikulka
This Goddam (Onehanded) Bastard
Martin McDonag has belonged among the most popular foreign playwrights in the Czech Republic since Prague’s ?inoherní klub successfully premiered his Lonely West in 2002. All the others McDonagh’s plays has been staged all around the country since then in many houses, and Cinoherní klub’s director Ond?ej Sokol has become sort of McDonagh’s Czech promoter. The new piece A Behanding in Spokane had been first time announced in ?inoherní klub even before its Broadway premiere and appeared on its tiny stage about half a year later, only due to copyright problems between the theatre and the local agency. As usually, Ondrej Sokol was not just the director, but also the translator of the play.
Something is missing…
While Martin McDonagh is still adorably skilful playwright, his last play lacks lot of sharpness and depth of his “Irish dramaturgy”. Of course, the reason obviously isn’t the American setting, problem feels like there is little bit too much of easiness. In other words, it looks like McDonag has decided to please really broad audience with clever, witty comedy and not to disturb anyone with any half hidden deeper points (as he did in his older plays). We see the funny and somehow absurd clash between the guy called Carmichael, looking for his hand and couple of young local tricksters who try to sell him a fake. Everything is made even more funny and absurd thanks to the presence of a strange and completely unpredictable receptionist Mervyn who is always ready to make the things go from bad to worse.
Last but not least: Carmichael is looking for his own hand, which was cut by a group of “hillbilly bastards“when he was only seventeen. And the episode in a cheap hotel room looks just like another unsuccessful stop in a life of the man who decided never give up the effort „to find what is undisputedly his“. Unfortunately McDonagh uses this promising situation almost exclusively for a firework of witty dialogues, many one-liners and a couple of jokes on expense of gender or racial or any other overcorectness („I said where is he, ya goddam onehanded bastard! … I mean, ya goddam bastard“).
Comedy. Just a comedy
Ondrej Sokol is a director known for his ability to make his actors to play above their standard, and also for paying great respect the playwright. Which means “the better play I grasp, the better production you get”, not a kind of a “give me anything, and I make a great theatre out of it” approach. In spite of that he decided not to believe Mr. McDonagh completely this time, trying to make some changes, all of them apparently with the aim to make the play look little bit deeper and fatal. Unsuccessfully, anyway. Neither the simultaneous dumb action in the next hotel room (sort of “western movie murder”) nor decision to let Mr. Carmichael finally find his missing hand, didn’t change the comedy into something else.
I spite of that, Cinoherní klub’s A Behanding in Spokane is still a very good comedy, with great performance of both actors in the principal roles of one-handed Carmichael and weird hotel man Mervyn. Marek Taclík, Sokol’s favourite actor for a long time, presents Carmichael as a surprisingly calm, almost decent character – as far as you can call “decent” an apparently dangerous guy with a gun in his only hand, ready to tie people to the radiator and burn the hotel down to the ground. With subdued fury and vicious sarcasm he dominates the first third of the show, and then he passes the leadership to Martin Finger as Mervyn. Finger is a main star of Divadlo Komedie, another important Prague small theatre house, and that is why even his appearance in Cinoherní klub is rather surprising. In Sokol’s production he creates a distinctive opposite of Taclík’s desperate and violent, but pretty rational Carmichael. Mervyn looks like living in a different world, gaping aside and using so strange intonations, you can be never sure whether he is serious or ironic or completely drugged (maybe all of it). Unfortunately two younger actors in the roles of the small swindlers and drug dealers are considerably weaker and whenever the action depends on them, the show looses a lot of its vivacity.
A Behanding in Spokane promises to be one of the audience’s favourite productions of the Cinoherní klub repertoire. Nevertheless, it is not up to either the expectation of the new McDonagh’s play, nor the older Sokol’s staging of Lonesome West, American Buffalo or Playboy of the Western World. A good comedy - nothing less, but nothing more.
Cinoherní klub – Martin McDonagh: A Behanding in Spokane. Translation and direction: Ondrej Sokol. Setting Adam Pitra. Costumes Katarína Hollá. Premiere 14th January 2011.
Cover Image: Martin Finger (Mervyn), Marek Taclík (Carmichael), Domingos Correia (Toby)
Tagged: Czech Republic, Guest