Director Michael Serna’s casting call for Costa Mesa Playhouse’s production of A Behanding in Spokane advised that auditioning actors be “fun, funny, and fearless,” which is how the envelope-pushing troupers at one of OC’s bravest, best small theaters will no doubt stage Irish playwright Martin McDonagh’s 2010 black comedy about a bad man who’s spent decades looking for his lost limb. And it applies to audiences, who have got to want to like the crazy violence, absurdity and razor-sharp dialogue by the author of the award-winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane and more. It’s high-concept hijinks among low people with smart, giddy-making-if-dangerous hilarity and a MacGuffin-driven plot that gets, yet, out of hand, quickly and gratifyingly.
Fridays, Saturdays, 8 p.m.; Sundays, 2 p.m. Starts: Oct. 23. Continues through Nov. 15, 2015
