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.
The problem is that “Behanding,” which opened last night, is simultaneously trying too hard and not hard enough.
The first part relates to the tone, which aims for the Coen brothers’ sweet spot: hip grotesque, abundant profanity, comic digressions (substitute a monkey for the Royale with cheese here).
And, of course, there’s the obligatory noir plot: Carmichael (Walken) had his left hand cut off when he was a kid, and he’s spent his whole life looking for it.
A couple of young, bungling con artists, Toby and Marilyn (Anthony Mackie, Zoe Kazan), try to sell him a mummified paw, and naturally everything goes horribly wrong. These two don’t stand a chance against the supernaturally serene Carmichael, who keeps them hostage in a dingy hotel room. (Clever shabby set courtesy of Scott Pask.)
But the play is on cruise control, and not even Walken can save it.
Typical is a monologue by the hotel’s resentful receptionist, Mervyn (Sam Rockwell), that moves from gibbons to high school shootings, but isn’t half as touching, funny or trenchant as it needs to be. And McDonagh resorts to racial elements that feel like leftover Quentin Tarantino-isms. Oooh, throwing the N-word around is so provocative!
As demonstrated in works like “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and “The Pillowman,” the Anglo-Irish playwright has a great ear for funny-scary colloquialisms and a genuine facility with words, but that’s also a trap: He doesn’t push himself nearly enough here.
It doesn’t help that under John Crowley’s direction, Kazan (especially shrill) and Mackie yell all their lines with hysterical urgency. OK, OK: So they’re handcuffed to pipes while a can of gasoline threatens to explode. But the constant fever pitch becomes numbing after a while, and doesn’t obscure the fact that Toby and Marilyn have had plenty of opportunities to escape. They’re so dumb, they deserve to go up in flames.
This is the first time McDonagh — who’s based most of his shows in Ireland — has premiered a work in the US. It’s hard not to wonder if he delivered what he thought (consciously or not) American audiences wanted. Too bad he sold us short.
elisabeth.vincentelli
@nypost.com