Spotlight: Spokane goes Broadway

This will be a first for Spokane, a Broadway play with our fair city in the title: “A Behanding in Spokane.”

Behanding, as in, beheading.

Hmm. Doesn’t exactly have a chamber of commerce ring to it.

Martin McDonagh, the Irish master of bloody black comedy, wrote this new play, which will open on Broadway in March. It’s about a man who is missing a hand. Naturally, he wants it back.

According to The New York Times, a couple tries to scam the one-handed guy and they end up shackled to a radiator. “Blood and gore and hilarity” ensue.

McDonagh is best known as the Oscar-nominated writer-director of “In Bruges.” He is also a popular, if controversial, playwright whose best-known works include “The Lieutenant of Inishmore” and “The Beauty Queen of Leenane.”

We don’t know why, exactly, Spokane is part of the title. Advance word is that the play is set in “small-town America.” Of course, in Manhattan, everything except New York is small-town America.

We do know that it’s the first McDonagh play not to be set in Ireland. Maybe he just wanted a city that rhymed, somewhat, with “hand.”

No ‘Red Dawn’?

It looks like the remake of the 1984 cult classic “Red Dawn” will be shot in Michigan, not Spokane.

As we reported a few weeks ago, the new script specified that the events take place in Spokane instead of Calumet, Colo., where the original was set.

This fueled speculation that Spokane would get the film shoot. The producers did indeed look at various shooting locations, including Washington.

Now we have word that filming will begin in Michigan in September. Apparently, MGM was lured there by tax incentives.

We don’t know if they’ll still call it “Spokane” in the movie. Hollywood has played bigger location tricks than that before. Like the time they shot a movie in Spokane and called it Manhattan.

Cummins comedy

Wanna be on Comedy Central?

Get your tickets to the Dan Cummins and Juston McKinney comedy show scheduled at the Bing Crosby Theater on Oct. 17, 7 p.m.

It will be taped for a Comedy Central special. Those shows are always generous with the audience reaction shots.

Cummins is a nationally known comic from Spokane (actually, Millwood) and McKinney is a Maine comic who is on the Blue Collar Comedy “Next Generation” Tour. Both are familiar faces on Comedy Central.

Tickets are $15, through TicketsWest outlets.

Aer-O-Toaster

Next time you’re at Spokane International Airport, check out the Ken Yuhasz artwork newly installed near the baggage claim area in the C Concourse.

It’s called the Aer-O-Toaster, a 15-foot flying toaster made of aluminum, glass, neon and fiberglass. It’s part of the Art in the Airport program.

Mann up

Aimee Mann, the singer-songwriter best known for her work with ‘Til Tuesday and her songs for the soundtrack for “Magnolia,” will be one of the first big ticketed concerts at the new Kroc Center in Coeur d’Alene.

Mann will bring her band and her grand piano to the center’s theater on Oct. 10 at 8 p.m. Tickets will be $30, on sale Friday at 10 a.m. through TicketsWest outlets.

Don’t procrastinate: The theater seats only about 400.

Salsa connection

Isaac Weiser, formerly of Spokane, is the bass player of LoCura, a San Francisco-based salsa-reggae-flamenco-rumba- Cuban-funk band.

They recently toured Spain and Morocco and have also been drawing crowds up and down the West Coast.

You can hear them for yourself, Tuesday at 8:30 p.m. at Gibliano Brothers Dueling Piano Bar and Music House, 718 W. Riverside Ave. Cover is $8.

The gospel of Denwyler

Denwyler, a Spokane-based duo, won the Gospel Music Association’s award for best group/duet in Nashville last week.

The finals, held during a huge GMA gathering, were hosted by Chris Sligh, an “American Idol” finalist.

Denwyler is made up of Evan Denlinger and Steven Wylie, who have performed for several years in local venues.

As part of the award, they got to meet with music industry executives. A little Nashville networking never hurts.