Chicago Tribune - Somewhat Recommended
"...There are some moments that work (the promisingly potent Greenfield and Riddle throw themselves into their unlucky characters to lively effect), but the play doesn't support such an approach easily. Mostly irony-free, this Chicago production misses much of the humor, and the characters feel like the consequence of intensely layered acting, when they need, I think, to float more easily in the imagination."
Chicago Sun Times - Somewhat Recommended
"...Gunshots, explosives, hands (and handcuffs) plus a whole lot of screaming are part of the mix here, as are large helpings of self-hatred, old-fashioned bigotry, resentment and betrayal."
Chicago Reader - Highly Recommended
"... . A Behanding in Spokane isn't the outright orgy of spurting arteries that Lieutenant is, but the two do have an awful lot in common. Dismemberment, for one thing. As the title suggests, Spokane concerns a medically unwarranted amputation. Our protagonist, Carmichael, claims that when he was a teenager some "hillbilly bastards" came along and carried him off to the train tracks, where they held his left arm down on a rail as the train went by. The hillbillies took the severed hand with them when they left, he says, and even waved good-bye with it. Carmichael has spent the 27 years since then doggedly pursuing two objectives: revenge and the recovery of his stolen hand. It appears that the revenge part has gone very well—the hillbillies, or maybe just some folks very like them, have had their comeuppance. But the hand remains at large."
Copley News Service - Recommended
"...McDonagh certainly has been more successful with his Irish plays, all of which have received first rate stagings by various area theaters. Reviewers are bound to report the play’s defects in the improbability of its story and its gratuitously rough language. But for audiences prepared to take the play as it comes, “A Behanding in Spokane” provides quite a ride."
Talkin Broadway - Recommended
"...McDonagh creates a world that is an isolated "land time forgot"—a decaying, barren hotel in what's certainly an economically depressed, dying town. A hotel one can believe would lack direct-dial telephones or any other guests to notice suspicious goings-on. The set by Thad Hallstein is a realistic depiction of such a place—a tiny, threadbare room that would likely be just as small as Profiles' stage. If the characters concerns seem petty—a drug deal rip-off, a $100 petty crime and a 27-year-old decomposed hand—these folks seem to have little else with which to concern themselves—a thought possibly as frightening as the violence depicted."
Centerstage - Highly Recommended
"...Dark humor leavens each scene, but the tension of every moment ticking by keeps the audience wonderfully on the edge of their seats, right up to the last moment of quiet despair."
Time Out Chicago - Somewhat Recommended
"...Martin McDonagh’s latest is the Irish playwright’s first to be set not in Connemara (as in A Skull in) or Leenane (The Beauty Queen of) or Inishmaan (The Cripple of) or Inishmore (The Lieutenant of) but in the United States. Profiles’ Chicago premiere opens on a familiar sight: a fantastically creepy Darrell W. Cox."
Chicago On the Aisle - Recommended
"...“A Behanding in Spokane” ultimately amounts to a beady-eyed spoof, a weird tale viewed through Carmichael’s foggy gaze. Cox’s knight errant is bleakly funny – slow of thought but single-minded in his purpose, lacking all human feeling but dutifully checking on mom. He gives this production both its center and its edge. He has the role down so well, he could surely do it with one hand tied behind his back. Well, not that hand. The other hand."
ChicagoCritic - Recommended
"... We are at a seedy hotel in some small American city where Carmichael (Darrell W. Cox) pulls out his pistol and fires intotheroom’s closetas we hear a man scream. Carmichael is a bearded40something man with a receding greasy hair black glasses and a long trench coat. You’d thinkthat McDonagh wrote this character for Darrell W. Coxsince he sototally inhabits the one-armed man seeking revenge for having his left hand cut off by a train after a group of hillbillies. Cox is terrific as the psychopath been on revenge."
Chicago Stage and Screen - Highly Recommended
"... Staged with creepy conviction by Rick Snyder, this Chicago premiere (the Broadway version featured Christopher Walken) is a rollercoaster of escalating idiocy. Throughout these rapt 90 minutes the audience remains paralyzed, helpless to intervene when four characters spark the worst in each other with every imbecilic thing they say or do."
Let's Play at ChicagoNow - Recommended
"... This 2010 creation marks award-winning Playwright Martin McDonagh’s first play set on American soil. A mysterious man checks into a seedy motel. He’s missing something. His hand! He lost it decades ago in a violent act. A young couple insist they have it. And for $500, he can have it back. Negotiations backfire and the noisy motel receptionist investigates. Who’s got hand now? BEHANDING IN SPOKANE is a quirky dark comedy."
Chicago Theater Beat - Somewhat Recommended
"... From the title onward, A Behanding in Spokane is marked by the idiosyncratic hyper-violence and twisted black humor that defines the dark and glorious works of Martin McDonagh. But as McDonagh’s works go, Behanding is a trifle. There’s no shocking familial backstory to unpack a la Pillowman. No family dysfunction boiling toward matricide as in the Beauty Queen of Leenane. A Behanding in Spokane is a smaller story, the tale of a simple man whose wants are few. Carmichael (Darrell W. Cox) just wants to get his long lost hand back."