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by Martin McDonagh, directed by David Ferry

BirdLand Theatre with CanStage,

Berkeley Street Theatre Downstairs, Toronto

September 20-October 27, 2007

If you have any problem with stories and depictions of the brutal torture and murder of children played as comedy, then Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play “The Pillowman” is not for you.  Anyone who has seen other plays by McDonagh--“The Beauty Queen of Leenane” (1996) or “The Lonesome West” (1997)-- will know that this Londoner of Irish descent loves to shock.  In “The Pillowman” you can almost sense McDonagh testing the audience to find out what perverse combination of laughter and violence will be too much.

Yet, though violence and suffering are constants in the play, they are not really what “The Pillowman” is all about.  The Kafkaesque action begins in an unnamed, totalitarian country somewhere in eastern Europe where two policemen interrogate a writer.  It seems that some of the many unpublished gruesome fairy tales by Katurian K. Katurian (Shaun Smyth) bear a striking resemblance to recent child murders in the local town.  Inspector Tupolski (Richard McMillan) plays good cop by trying to wear down Katurian with psychological games while sadistic bad cop Ariel (Oliver Becker) favours truncheons and electrodes to obtain confessions.  Katurian also has to cope with the fear of what they two may do to his mentally damaged brother Michal (Paul Fauteux) in the next room. 

Storytelling is the theme of the play.  How reality influences fiction and vice versa is the most obvious question McDonagh examines along with the relative nature of guilt and innocence, but even more essential is his positing fiction as a way to combat and even survive the chaos of the world.  The BirdLand/Canadian Stage presentation is overproduced.  Video projections and montages are really unnecessary in a play focussed on the relation between narrator and listener and prettify the story’s grittiness. 

The cast, however, is excellent.  Smyth gives an amazingly nuanced performance especially considering that his emotionally and physically battered character suffers in extreme situations throughout the entire play.  Fauteux is mesmerizing as an innocent who casually reveals shocking truths.  Their relationship is as complex and heartbreaking as that of George and Lenny in “Of Mice in Men”.  McMillan and Becker don’t really achieve a comparable sense of rapport until the final act.  Then both shine when McDonagh reveals that even the most brutal men can harbour a sentimental streak.  The issues the play raises along with its plot undergo so many twists that it finally becomes an insoluble puzzle.  If you can see past the steady stream of shocks, you will find the puzzle is devilishly fascinating.                       

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-09-21.

Photo: Shaun Smyth and Richard MacMillan. ©Chris Gallow.