Review: 'A Behanding in Spokane' at None Too Fragile Theater

Review: 'A Behanding in Spokane' at None Too Fragile Theater
by Brit Charek

When you really get down to it, 'A Behanding in Spokane' is just the story of a guy trying to find a missing piece of himself.

Symbolically and literally.

The drama's antihero, a curmudgeonly one-handed man named Carmichael, is on a quest to find his missing appendage that had been cut off 37 years prior in Spokane, Washington. A quirky bickering interracial couple, Toby and Marilyn, try to pull one over on him by selling him a phony, but this is clearly not a first for Carmichael.

The story goes down at a hotel where we discover that the receptionist, a dimwit roaming around in his boxers named Mervyn, has a bone to pick with Toby and a crush on Marilyn. Needless to say, he's not too helpful when Carmichael leaves them handcuffed to a radiator with a lit candle in the mouth of a gas can, classic James Bond villain style.

The whole play takes place in a single room.

Just when we are about to write Mervyn off as a bumbling idiot rambling on about what other people should do and how he wants there to be a massacre so that he can be the hero, he turns around and says one of the most profound lines in the entire play, "Where's a story like that gonna go?" Crazy as it sounds, Mervyn is much like Hamlet's Polonius, who rambles on and on giving others unsolicited advice with the occasional inspiring quote-- Good luck finding a graduation ceremony where you don't hear, "To thine own self be true"-- and just like as with Shakespeare, we leave the play not really knowing what kind of guy Mervyn is.

'A Behanding' is a delightful roller coaster of an evening, as long as you can handle some offensive language, a considerable amount of racial tension, and the occasional bloody severed hand thrown across the stage in a  nonchalant manner all in an intimate black box style theater setting.

Make sure to grab some grub from Pub Bricco before or after the show.

None Too Fragile is located in the same space as Pub Bricco in the valley. To learn more, check out their website or the post we did on them when they first opened.

'A Behanding in Spokane' closes this weekend. Make sure to catch it Friday, March 8 or Saturday March 9 at 8 pm. Tickets are $20 or pay-what-you-can.