Round Swamp Farm

Memorial Day Weekend. Round Swamp Farm re-opened for the season exactly 21 days ago. 21 blessed days! I don't know about you, but for me it's been a long, cold winter. The wait from Thanksgiving until Round Swamp opens again is a hold-your-breath kind of thing. Who wants to go into a kind of extended withdrawal from every kind of ultimate summer delight? Never mind that--how can a person even tolerate being without their coconut cream pie??? How?

If you are not an initiate, let me give you the low-down. Round Swamp Farm is the farm stand you would expect to find on the road to heaven. It is a marvel--it looks and feels so perfectly as you want it to, that it seems to have materialized through some sort of otherworldly computer-generated holograph.

Let me say that I am very happy when I am there. I am very much aware of being alive at Round Swamp Farm; aware, too, of my proud place, shoulder-to-shoulder, within a community of deeply discriminating devotees.

When I walk in from the gravel parking lot under the widespread shade tree, deep-set off Three Mile Harbor Road in East Hampton--I have a brief moment of feeling like the world is, and always has been, an abundant, loving place to live. I don't know if you noticed, but I'm talking about a farm stand, right? Anyway, in that state of innocence and blessing, I begin. And let's just say this--they do not fuck around at Round Swamp Farm.

The first of three baked-goods areas hits you right as you walk in. There you will behold Lisa's famous "Ultimate Cookies (chocolate chip, raisin, you name it)," and her "Lemon Drops," along with the new "Almond Drops." The drop cookies are tiny round shortbreads. But dare I say--they are so much more. To me, for instance, they are the way to have a soul-warming breakfast. They are the way to have a snack that feels measured by its serenity. But let's not get stuck there--the raspberry-filled cookies are a matter of deep, deep stuff. They come nine to a pack, and they are hard to get home. I have taken a raspberry cookie poll of my Round Swamp brethren, and they agree--hard to get home. Hey, it's not just their cookies--I've been known to finish their macaroni salad in the parking lot (and I don't even like macaroni salad).

And that is just the barest of starts. Five and a half feet further on you encounter a door through which you enter the refrigerated produce room. Come on--shouldn't everyplace have a refrigerated room to choose your produce from in the summer? Well, this one has the best looking basil this side of San Remo, Charlie's arugula, and corn picked fresh all day from their fields out back. But it's not just the incredible herbs, fruits, and amazing swath of lettuce varieties--the room has total magic. Just leave it at that.

Another seven feet and you've encountered the realm of the chicken. Realm of the chicken? Well, yeah. There is no place I know of where I am more inclined to buy so many different forms of chicken! Not even close. Without wanting to reprise the shrimp-list-scene from Forest Gump, herewith a list of my regular chicken purchases: chicken salad (let's not even get into it--it's simply chicken, no gimmicks whatsoever, and better than it ever should be), chicken buffalo balls, roasted chicken (make no mistake--Lisa roasts a mean chicken), chicken skewers, chicken pot pie (I am a serious chicken pot pie man, and this is the very best chicken pot pie in the world), picnic chicken, chicken tenders, chicken wontons (new last year--these things are the most ridiculously addictive pop-ems ever), chicken dumplings...excuse me, I'm entering a sort of Round Swamp Chicken-induced fugue state.

But wait, we haven't even come yet to the thing everyone rhapsodizes about at Round Swamp--their pies! Ok, let us be reverent here. There is nothing here to be taken lightly. These are the most supernal, everlastingly delicious pies that will ever pass your lips. These are not regular pies. I am sure that if I stood with Lisa, in her kitchen, with her ingredients, and she told me exactly what to do and how to do it, correcting technique--whatever she needed--that I could not produce one. The crumbled crust is a thing of wonder, with tendrils that reach down deep. Into your soul. If I ever have to somehow choose the best summer dessert ever--it might be her blueberry-peach crumb pie. Except that it might be her coconut cream pie (also new, two years ago).

Hey, I hadn't had a slice of coconut cream pie until Round Swamp brought it roaring back into my life, since I was a teenager in New Jersey. Why? Well, if you grew up near Verona, NJ, you probably spent a fair amount of time at the Claremont Diner, home of the yummiest possible coconut cream pie. The place was famous for it (it was famous, too, for Frankie Valli, of Four Seasons fame, having his own centrally located, and always reserved for him, table in the "new room" of the place). I never even considered trying a pretender to coconut cream pie after the Claremont. Until Round Swamp--now I dream about it and wonder greatly about how much weight can be gained from it over the course of a summer.

But what about the main counter of baked yumminess? What can I say? By the time you turn the pie corner your basket is usually too full to even manage, let alone open enough for the peach corn muffins or the pecan sticky buns. But you don't have a choice--what are you gonna do? Go home without them? Now you're talking silly. So you join the line and you rush a mexican three-cheese dip, with a baguette and a macaroni salad onto the counter, last-minute kinda thing.

Then Jeannie tells you how the baby's doing (fifteen months now, getting really big), she calls you honey eleven or more times (she once called me honey three times in one sentence--try it), and rings you up with the precision of a genetics engineer. Oh, did I mention that Round Swamp is expensive? I mean really expensive. Hey, it doesn't seem like it--and you don't care. Really--you don't. But they don't even have prices on anything, and I don't know anyone who has ever asked. Well, not anyone who gets to come back anyway. Who would ask? You would be ostracized, persona non grata (as well you should).

But don't go there, please. We regulars do not want you to further crowd our beloved farm stand (and let it be known--regular-hood is not easily earned! I have been going regularly, devotedly, to Round Swamp for more than 25 years. Two years ago was the first time Carolyn (the proprietor) kissed me hello for the season).

If you do go though, if you really must--say hello for me.

Frankie and Johnnie's

I had not thought of going to Frankie and Johnnie’s in quite some time. After all, it is not a hot spot; not a quick bite, neither is it one of the Peter Luger-lineage houses sprouting up about town--not a place you would generally meet your friends. I’ll be back though--it is seriously delicious!

Hey, you can get a darn good steak lots of places. I don’t know if we should get into a whole “exegesis of the steak” right this minute--but maybe a quick review of some on offer may be in order.

Start with the Palm (Westside Palm, 50th between 7/8). Hey, the Palm serves a good steak. But it has become an uneven affair, can even get a little weary at times. Gone are the days you would thrill to their charred crusted steaks, smoking from their 900-degree broilers that flash seared juices in and char out. Gone, too, is your steak’s arrival still sizzling and bristling with just-right texturing, and marbling flavor. I’m not taking anything away from their hash brown potatoes, which are still pretty terrific, nor from the creamed spinach. And I, for one, would never impugn their best-in-show blue cheese salad dressing (I could wear the stuff, it’s so good)--my favorite anywhere. But the steak? These days, it’s just a good steak.

On the other hand, the other of the chain experts, del Frisco, is doing it right, over at 6th Ave and 49th street, with their rib-eye and bone-in cuts. Like the Palm, they’ve been uncannily successful at replicating their distinctive flavors, across their wide chain. The place is always bustling with business types and their dates (illicit and otherwise), and it can get a bit frisky in there. But here is the deal—they serve an incredibly yummy rib eye, charred beautifully, with marbled integrity, and bursting with that closest-to-rib-flavor. To top it off, their au poivre sauce, especially with the tender filet, is just as yummy, and just-right spicy.

I think we need speak, too, of the Peter Luger offshoots (offspring?), even as none are quite in the theater district. One’s pretty close (44^th between 2/3) and Ben and Jack’s is essentially the same as Wolfgang’s to my taste. Ok, I will admit it—Peter Luger is a great steakhouse, but not always my favorite. Yes, they serve an incredible porterhouse. And they use butter very, very well--very well indeed. The au jus mixed with butter that is there for the yummiest of dipping is the hallmark of Peter Luger steak eating for me. But the hallmark of the entire Luger experience is their amazing, no--supernal, Canadian bacon--served, of course, by the slice (how many pre-steak slices a person can down without branding themselves a forever glutton is open to debate). I’m pretty sure I could eat myself into a Canadian bacon-induced stupor, or, at the very least, a gallbladder emergency--if left to my own devices. So, come on, you join that dipping with that bacon? You have one primo steak experience.

My nod now for a theater steak, though, has to go to Frankie and Johnnie’s. Their sirloin is charred to perfection. And it is a marvel for a sirloin, which is not known for its abundant marbling, to burst with so much flavor and consistency. I’m always so disappointed at the cut when I work my way toward the bone of a sirloin, and the meat gets less and less lively. Not to worry--not here anyway. This thing is super-good all the way home. Of course they have the requisite side dishes (none are as exceptional as specific counterparts) and they acquit themselves well. Finally, I think you will hear me on this—their steaks are super-steak-flavored!

Hey, I’m sure that my triumphant return to Frankie and Johnnie’s’ sirloin is at least a little colored by one of the fundamental stories of my theater youth. I went there for the first time when I was 11 years old, with my parents, after a play. We sat by the window, at the table second closest to the kitchen. Next to us, at the table in the middle of the place, were—Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward. Maybe you didn’t get that—Joanne Woodward, and, Paul Fucking Newman. My mother nearly had a fit! Apparently, they were appearing together on Broadway, the only time they did, in Baby Want a Kiss. It was 1964. Anyway, my mother sends me over to their table, with the menu, paper at that time, to ask Mr. Newman, Paul, for his autograph. You know, for me. (are you kidding me? she couldn’t wait to get her grubby little hands on it—all I know is I never saw it again)

So there they were. We were riveted. He had a headache. He was out of sorts. Not himself. He asked for two aspirin. The waiter brought the salad. “Get this out of here,” Newman ordered. “Bring me the lettuce and bring me the salad dressing makings,” his annoyed demand followed, “I will make the salad dressing!”

I know, I know. It sounds like bullshit. But it’s not--I swear it. Way before anyone ever heard of Newman’s Own, before anyone knew Paul Newman would go on to greater culinary/philanthropic glories—we knew. I know—it’s a ridiculous apocryphal story I heard and made my own, a child’s silly conflation. But it’s not.

And the steaks are delicious

This Year's Tonys

Here we go. It's Tony time, and as always--it's a mixed season. It's certainly been a killer season for leading male performances, shorter on thrilling female performances. New musicals have been anemic for a long time. But who cares? The thrills were all over the boards, and there's still nothing like it.

Herewith, my picks.

Best Play

Will win--Red

Should win--Next Fall

Criminally ignored--A Behanding in Spokane

Best Musical

Will win--American Idiot

Should win--Fela

Best Book of a Musical

Will win--Fela

Should win--Everyday Rapture

Best Original Score

Will win--Memphis

Should win--None

Best Revival of a Play

Will win--Fences

Should win--Fences

Best Revival of a Musical

Will win--La Cage Aux Folles

Should win--La Cage Aux Folles

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Play

Will win--Denzel Washington (Fences)

Should win--Denzel Washington

Should have been nominated--James Spader (Red)

Gave incredible, bravura performances--Denzel Washington, Liev Screiber, Christopher Walken

Gave really terrific performance--Alfred Molina

Most thrilling category competition in a while!

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Play

Will win--Viola Davis (Fences)

Should win--Viola Davis

Um, no contest

Best Performance by a Leading Actor in a Musical

Will win--Douglas Hodge (La Cage Aux Folles)

Should win--Douglas Hodge

Should have been nominated: John Gallagher, Jr. (American Idiot)

Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical

Will win--Catherine Zeta-Jones (A Little Night Music)

Should win--Sherie Renee Scott (Everyday Rapture)

Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play

Will Win--John Michael Hill (Superior Donuts)

Should win--Stephen McKinley Henderson (Fences)

God, this one's close--I loved JMH only about 3 hundredths of a point less

Another thrilling category this season

Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play

Will win--Scarlett Johansson (A View From the Bridge)

Should win--Scarlett Johansson

Who knew she had these kind of chops (we knew she had the other kind)

Best Direction of a Play

Will win--Gregory Mosher (A View From the Bridge)

Should win--Kenny Leon (Fences)

Best Direction of a Musical

Will win--Bill T. Jones (Fela)

Should win--Terry Johnson (La Cage Aux Folles)

Should have been nominated--Michael Mayer (American Idiot)

There it is!

Luscious Theater Bits

Ok. Where should I stop for an entirely luscious little something near the theater? This is not a question I ask lightly. Nor should you. I really need a hot list of locked-and-loaded desirables at the ready for such purposes. You know--a place to get a longed-for thing, not a whole meal situation. Herewith, my current favorites.

An item back from the archives for me lately is the baked mac and cheese at the Brooklyn Diner. If you have never had the dish there, don't be deceived. We're not talking fried mac 'n cheese blobs; we're not even talking a proper mac 'n cheese exactly. This dish is Brooklyn Diner's take on the famous tagliarini con prosciutti al forno, as served at the Cipriani and Harry's Bar in Venice. Cipriani does it here in NY, too, of course--but I would have to call theirs a bit of a translation as well. I remember the first time I bit into the dish at Harry's Bar (It was before the bite that I truly remember most--the way my fork had to break the burnt, crispy, covering-the-whole-top-of-the-thing, crust of cheese). It was heaven. Now Brooklyn Diner's version doesn't compare to Cipriani's in Venice--but whose would?. Theirs has too much cheesy, creamy sauce--it's true. The tagliarini can be a tad overcooked. The prosciutto, but of course, is nowhere near as nutty-good nor as plentiful. And the crust does not typically develop the same amount of burn. But it is good. Delicious, really. If I had never received the original blessing, I'm sure I would rate this even higher. All that said, this version is still deeply satisfying and the crust is still a sort of thrilling thing to contend with.

Ok, can we take a little trip back to my mother's kitchen? Alright, let me get this said--hers was not a horn of plenty kind of kitchen, not a place of deeply delicious memory. It will not become a theme of this column. But honor where honor is due. The old broad could make a serious matzoh brei! She knew to soak the matzo until it was feeble. She knew that the brei should cohere, that it should be at least a little, but not too very, fluffy; she knew well the main Jewish commandment--make it seriously well-done. My mother closed the kitchen years ago; I don't think her Florida home has ever been used for actual cooking. But, alas, the Cafe Edison makes a matzo brei to compete with Mom's. It may even be better. They do under-salt the thing, and it is much better to salt it before it's done, but--you can't have everything. It is a marvel though--a combination of standard with german-type pancake omelet. It has very real architecture, not so dissimilar to a frisbee. And it will take you back to the days when there were more than the maybe three places that even still have it on the menu--when the robust flavors and rib-sticking goodness of a matzo brei were standard New York Jewish fare.

Back from the itunes library and on to my current playlist is John's Pizza's incredibly yummy sausage rolls. Didn't even know John's had such a thing? Well, that's because they don't--not, at least, at their original location on Bleecker they don't. But they do at other locations, including--lucky for us--44th Street, hard by the St. James. These are precious little pizza-dough thingys with cheese, and rolled with what I can only say is very good sausage indeed. Whenever I remember to remember them, I am always so glad I did. You can order them with a side of pizza sauce if you like, but I always go for the straight-up experience--better to take in their utter sausageness. And I like that they're grabbable in no time. Go have an order, let me know what you think.

Last, there is a very serious contender for best dish in the entire Broadway area. The spinach lasagne at Insiemme stands, I think, as New York's current best lasagne. I say this: it is entirely as good as any I have had in Italy, better than most. They make it with a subtle, lighter than you expect, but still robust, bolognese. They melt in the cheese and add the bechamel, to its many-layered goodness, with the calculation of the oldest, most revered, artisanal, lasagne scoula. It is a thing of many splendors. The lightness of texture while keeping along the razor's edge of al dente is a marvel. If Insiemme weren't as fancy feeling as it is, and the bar as intimate as it is with only four seats or so, I would eat this lasagne very frequently. Very very frequently.

La Cage Aux Folles

Add mine to the chorus of voices singing their praise of Douglas Hodge in La Cage Aux Folles. His is by far the tenderest, inner-reaching, portrayal of Albin, the flamboyant star, "Zaza," of the titled review, to date. Yes, Kelsey Grammar acquits himself well as George, Albin's partner and proprietor of the club--he does. But this production from the Menier Chocolate Factory (they of the 15 Tony Award nominations for "La Cage" and "A Little Night Music.") is illumined by the brightness and depth of it's inestimable star--Mr. Hodge.

Much-noted are Mr. Hodge's somewhat loftier portrayals--in Pinter and Chekhov (and that other writer of ribald reviews--better known as Shakespeare). And it always lends a certain deliciousness when a "serious actor" comes over to the musical side of the aisle--but I wouldn't have cared if Mr. Hodge had come from "Banana Shpeel." I have not really seen his work on the London stage, but I am glad he has traveled across both the pond and the musical divide. Welcome.

The genius of this production is how seamlessly it blends the pathos of the shabby nightclub, with the dignity and redemption of its denizens. Every bead and feather left out here lifts the whole thing up, gives rise to that dignity. The guts of the two great songs, "The Best of Times" and the gay anthem "I Am What I Am" become clearer and stronger in the spare light of shab.

Kudos to Terry Johnson for the insight of his direction.

I've always felt that the main story here is really a sort of slight sidebar. Whether George and Albin's son can pull off the ruse to fool his intended in-laws that he was raised in a more traditional home--who cares? We definitely care though about Albin's feelings of betrayal. This time anyway, we care about every twitch and turn Albin struggles with to keep his boy and keep his soul. It is not broad flamboyance Mr. Hodge uses here, it is charm and grace and heartfelt sorrow. Bravo.

Fences

When you enter the Cort theater for the new production of August Wilson's "Fences," the set is in full view. It is an evocative set (another fertile home-setting set by the wonderfully prolific Santo Loquasto). We're in the backyard of a non-descript house in the Hills district of Pittsburgh, the setting for much of Wilson's oeuvre, in his epic 10-play cycle of the black experience in the 2oth Century. This is the one that covers the 50's decade.

As you sit admiring the set, with its wonderfully evocative tree downstage-right, and understanding it will all soon come to life--you are still not ready for the way it happens. All of a sudden (in my memory the lights hadn't even fully dimmed yet) Denzel Washington (Troy) and Stephen Mckinley Henderson (Bono) arrive, as if from nowhere, and fill the stage with life. I'm not talking about within minutes--I'm talking about right then and there, in the very first beats. By the time minutes have elapsed you are so steeped in the lives of these two characters that the broader context and implications you later contemplate (which is inevitable after a Wilson play) are already firmly felt. Viscerally, gladly.

The anticipation, the imagining of the great actor matched with the great role, that has attended Mr. Washington's starring role in this production still did not, could not really, have prepared us for the exquisite, preternatural way he inhabits the role. It is an ineffable thing, not one, I don't believe, another actor could possibly come to study, and hope to duplicate somehow. No, it is his. In my mind now, forever more. Denzel (come, on--he is Denzel, right; the Times style guide notwithstanding) uses the metaphor of baseball here, of stepping up to the plate to wrestle with his disappointment and resentment, to wrestle with the demons of his youth, to wrestle with death itself really, for all it has ever been worth. All I can say is this is the kind of performance, the kind of production, that comes along once every five or ten years--if that.

And that is saying something. Especially since my memory of the original, 1987, production is suffused with the booming performance of the great James Earl Jones. In fact, his performance, like that of Ethel Merman as Mama Rose in Gypsy, was thought at the time to be definitive (until Patty Lupone came along and snatched the thing away two years ago, and called it her own). So, to have this performance be so integral, so transporting--so knock-down, drag-out defining is beyond thrilling.

And, hey, what about last year's revival of Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone?" I felt it was better than the original as well. What's happening here? Are we absorbing Wilson as our poet-playwright in some new way? Has his lyrical way with us begun to cohere, to ferment? Has he planted himself, posthumously, in our hearts and in our canon in a deeper-reaching way? Is August Wilson the Shakespeare of our time (with apologies to the incomparable JL)?

I don't know. But I do know it is not Denzel alone who effortlessly gives wings to this production. Viola Davis (as Rose, his wife) is standing toe-to-toe with Denzel, and calling it even most of the time. Her natural swoon in the arms of her admiring husband in the first act holds only the slightest hint of any trouble that might inhibit it in the second. But the slightest hint is there for us to register. Come, on. I would be thankful for just that. But I needn't be--the delivery of her cathartic Act II speech has a power that seems to roil up from the depths of all despair. And Mr. Henderson, the Wilson veteran whose work in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, and especially Jitney, is so seemless, so vital, provides a dimension of knowing in his lilting patois that feels like that of Wilson's very own sensitivity.

But it's Denzel's show. He is by turns irresistibly magnetic, forbidding and menacing--he fools us into accepting his defenses. He saves and ruins his son. And you are by the end bursting at the standing ovation seems to honor him for it.

Mile End Deli

If you're like me, you took note (took extreme note?) of the tantalizing, lusciously alluring photo of a smoked meat on rye, in New York Magazine a few months ago, in advance of the opening of what promised to be New York's first purveyor of real Montreal smoked meat sandwiches.

Well, Mile End is open, and it is a smash! This is the real deal, we are talking some serious smoked meat here.

Hey, I had told myself after I saw the advance photo, that they had doctored it--it couldn't look or taste that good in person. I knew they probably used the best looking possible sandwich worth of meat from the mile of meat they must have smoked to get it. I told myself, "Don't Ron, don't do it--don't expect it to look or taste like that. You always get so disappointed."

Let me tell you--the sandwich looked precisely like the one in the picture!! And it tasted like the best smoked meat I ever had in Montreal. OMG!!

They are hand-carving the meat (a kind of brown/black/burgundy affair), and it is lean, and it is thick, and it is full of smoky/nutty/pastrami/jewish/heaven-ness. The last time I saw meat hand-sliced this beautifully, and tasting this good was when Pastrami King was still open in Kew Gardens.

The place is cute-cute. It is so far open only for lunch (till 4PM), but they promise to be open for dinner by summer. It is crowded and only has four tables and a small counter. That they have a take-out window on the street is a joke--they're not even close to keeping up with the orders inside. Hey, I know this is Boerum Hill and not Times Square, but they gotta get a coupla experienced deli men in there to accompany the slackers from the neighborhood behind the counter. I'm worried somebody might get killed from the frustration of those waiting for their sandwiches. Listen, the guy carving the smoked meat looks like he's playing with an erector kit, and hasn't quite learned the architecture yet.

But don't let that daunt you--this is one of the best sandwiches in the city, and rivaling the greats of the deli world. Rush out to Hoyt Street, just off Atlantic Ave, and welcome the arrival of an honest-to-goodness, take-you-back-to-the-old-days deli sandwich. And thank g-d for it.

A Behanding in Spokane

I saw "A Behanding in Spokane" for the third time last night. I am scheduled for my fourth visit this coming Wednesday. This is that very rare instance when a play gets under my skin the way a powerful musical score more regularly does.

I do think they are different things. Yes, they both happen in the theater, of course. But a musical has moments of deliberately soaring feelings. Hey, why do they dim the lights, someone steps downstage, and begins to sing instead of continuing speaking, in the first place? Because the feelings are supposedly too powerful to be contained within the spoken discourse anymore--the character is overcome, and must express the hopefully soaring (or diving) feelings in song (well, that's the theory, anyway)! Think "Les Miserables." Think about Jean Valjean learning that a case of mistaken identity is leading to someone going to jail for his crime, and he is tortured, tormented by the prospect of it. He tears at himself, he looks within, and begins, "Who Am I? Can I condemn this man to slavery? Pretend I do not see his agony? This innocent who bears my face, who goes to judgment in my place. Who Am I..."

Of course we know how it ends. By song's end Valjean has found Javert and has declared finally, with the dignity of resolve, "Who Am I?...2-4-6-0-1!!" Bliss. I saw "Les Miserbles" 11 times. (Ok, I know. Victor Hugo did just fine with the thing without bursting into song, but come on--you know what I mean). 11 times! I could not get the score out of my head. And I could not keep the characters from my heart--not that I wanted to. I wait years for this sort of shit!

My record for seeing any play, musical or not, is 12 times. Guess as long as you want, you will not likely guess which it was, for this thing does not tend to follow linear pathways. The record of 12 is held by "Bring in da Noise, Bring in da Funk," the rap, tap musical discourse with Savion Glover (I just found him spellbinding). Eleven goes to "Les Miserables," and "A Chorus Line." Just to give you an idea, I even saw "Hello Dolly" three times--and I was 12 years old!" Oh, the Harmonia Gardens.

So it is with great relish that I welcome the urgency to go back, when it comes around in a non-musical. "A Behanding in Spokane" is Martin McDonaugh's new play, he of the Irish noir trilogies Leenane and Inishmaan. It's his first set in America, though following his tradition of dark, gonzo-sort-of Irish tales (gory--dark, gonzo-sort-of-Irish tales). I like McDonaugh and was a big fan of "The Beauty Queen of Leenane."

"A Behanding in Spokane" is a lively entertainment, and I admire the writing. And this brand of dark comedy is right up my alley. But I would have seen it exactly once if it weren't for the incredible--yes, soaring--performance by Christopher Walken. Walken is giving the bravura performance of a lifetime here (and that is saying something!).

In brief, the story follows Walken's character, who lost his hand 47 years ago during the commission of a gruesome crime, and has been obsessed with finding the hand ever since. Walken's character (Mr. Carmichael) lives on the margins of society. I'm talking way out on the margins. The margins not just of society, but of normal human interaction, of any kind of known morality--and any kind of normal sense of humor either. Or timing. Mr. Carmichael says the darkest possible things in a way that not only he, but that only Christopher Walken could ever deliver. He is funny in that way that you can't not laugh, but you are saying, "Oh shit," at the same time. And what about that timing? Mr. Walken is essentially giving a master class in timing and delivery here.

Yes, I am a huge Christopher Walken fan (who isn't?) I can tell you, for instance, that if you want to just skip to the funniest part of the movie, "The Aristocrats," just go the part with Kevin Pollack relating the filthy joke as Christopher Walken had told it to him, claiming that the setup actually happened to his uncle (with Pollack doing an uncanny Walken delivery). So I will not try to inhabit that which is swirling of him in my mind right now, nor to rehash any of the funniest lines in the play, or try to describe their delivery. Suffice it to say that I was under his spell. Suffice it to say that I regaled my date afterward, with my very best Walken voice, with memories of my favorite lines (do we think that endeared me to her, or maybe not?).

More than ably adding to the evening is Sam Rockwell, as the beleaguered and off-the-wall receptionist at the hotel Mr. Carmichael finds himself in. Zoe Kazan gives the thing a bit of spirit too.

I can't recommend this evening enough. The play lasts a brief 90 minutes. And it is brief--because it opens strong, grabs you by the throat, and drags you around for the remaining 89 minutes. And boy are you glad it did.