A morose man with a missing hand, a swindling couple and an adventurous hotel receptionist with an obsession for gibbons carry forward Martin Mc Donagh's black comedy A BEHANDING IN SPOKANE. The plot is somewhat formulaic. Carmichael has spent seventeen years looking for his severed half limb. In come Marilyn and Toby, a hoax hand-selling couple. Carmichael reads through their lie and threatens to punish them with death until Mervyn a modern day picaro comes to their rescue. Many racist jokes and satirical observations later, Marilyn and Toby escape. Carmichael continues his quest and Mervyn returns to his everyday world with a more fulfilled sense of adventure.
In Le Chayin and Black Boxer's production of A BEHANDING IN SPOKANE, Kashin Shetty assimilates most of Mc Donagh's elements creating an atmosphere of grim black humour. The set too is a genuine recreation of the base hotel room inhabited by Carmichael with his suitcase full of chopped up hands. Where the team falters though and rather noticeably so is in being unable to be convincing of the characters. Mc Donagh's play is replete with racist humour. It takes much more than just willing suspension of disbelief to let the actors on stage pass off as Mc Donagh's characters. Shweta Tripathi is dressed as Marilyn but speaks like a true Mumbaite. Abhishek Saha wears the make-up of a nigger but speaks in mixed accents. What we have eventually is a pell-mell of mixed characters delivering Mc Donagh's localized humour which connects remotely, if at all with the Indian milieu. Racist and risque jokes make for most of the dialogue that gathers a few laughs here and there. But the subtexts of Mc Donagh's work -i.e. tolerance towards those who've suffered losses; and his theme of brutality hardly carry through.
Ali Fazal is an over-confident Carmichael mouthing his lines with an irrepressible vigour that defies his character. He is hardly sinister and hardly restless. Shweta Tripathi's expressions and gestures are more reliable, but her intonation is too casual and lazy. Abhishek Saha though is a faithful Toby. His comic timing is enjoyable and holds most of the dialogue together whereas Prabal Panjabi gives an endearing performance too. As such the play becomes a light-hearted watch with its stand-up comedy like humour. There is no verisimilitude, and neither a faithful re-creation of Mc Donagh's characters.
*Asma Ladha holds a Master's degree in English Literature and Applied Linguistics. She is an applied linguist, a freelance critic, a research student and a poet.
