Once upon a time, there was dark and narrow room used for brutal interrogations by the police of a totalitarian dictatorship. One day, a writer named Katurian Katurian (Andrew Jessop) came into that room, and, between smacks to the head, he began to tell his story.
The tale that unfolds in Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman" takes place almost entirely in these oppressive confines. In Redtwist's intimate storefront space, the claustrophobia is literal as well as atmospheric. But the play's real discomfort comes from the murky psychological and moral space its characters are trying to navigate. Katurian writes grisly short stories in which children suffer terribly, usually at the hands of adults (think Charles Dickens meets Edward Gorey). Someone has been recreating Katurian's horrid scenarios in real life, and the police (Tom Hickey and Johnny Garcia) believe he and his troubled brother (Peter Oyloe) are involved.
As the line begins to blur between Katurian's life story and his fables, we realize that the ghastly universe inside his head reflects a real world in which little kids are brutally abused at home, or brutally murdered when they go outside. Katurian's, and apparently McDonagh's, only moral certainty is that child abuse is really, really bad. Killing adult abusers (or pretty much any adult; they're all a bit rotten) is fine. Child murder is itself a gray area, since dead kids aren't suffering kids. As for totalitarianism and its attendant evils (police brutality, insidious anti-Semitism, rampant censorship), well, they really have nothing on the crazy, crazy insanity of domestic life in this unnamed state.
Squeam-inducing as McDonagh's now well-known script is, the strong ensemble cast inflects the production with liveliness, adding sparkles of wit to the tense cat-and-mouse game of interrogation. Two candy-colored scenes (sets by Anders Jacobson and Judy Radovsky) turn nightmare narrative into visual treat. Overall, though, the oppressive darkness of the opening scene never lifts. Given the nature of the play, it's an open question whether this is an artistic failure, or success.
Reviewed by Centerstage!
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