Craig Parker and Michael Hurst
Theatre
Grimm tale
by Natasha Hay
Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman is not comfortable theatre. Having toyed wildly with Irish forms (The Cripple of Inishmaan, Beauty Queen of Leenane) to create pitch-black, tasteless melodramas, he has now turned his considerable sardonic talents to European traditions. The Pillowman owes as much to the Brothers Grimm as to Kafka and Beckett and the result is a disquieting nightmare of a play that creates its own dark fairy tales.
The hero, Katurian (Craig Parker), is a writer who has been arrested in a faceless totalitarian regime. Most of the action takes place in a featureless cell where he is interrogated by two cops (John Verryt’s striking minimalist black-and-white design lends a chilling surreality).
Surprisingly, Katurian’s crime is not political; it is because the violent events in his Shockheaded Peter-like tales are similar to some actual child murders. When it turns out that his retarded brother, Michal (Gareth Reeves), carried out the killings, Katurian must decide whether to sacrifice the life of his brother, and be executed himself, to ensure the preservation of his stories.
However, moral dilemmas are raised, then swept aside. The Pillowman is less about whether violent writing leads to violent acts and the power of the state, and more about the nature of the creative mind and the power of storytelling itself.
Thus we are treated to several grisly tales told in bedtime-storybook mode by Katurian, which are re-enacted in a series of macabre sketches. As soon as we are lulled by Parker’s languid tones, we are jolted by sudden lashings of violence. Seems a warped imagination is the legacy of an abusive childhood.
At one stage even the detective, Tupolski, relates a fable – a joy to hear due to Jonathan Hardy’s bravura performance. Master of the deadpan, Hardy milks the humour brilliantly and allows glimpses of Tupolski’s pained cruelty behind a glib facade. As his sinister sidekick, Ariel, Michael Hurst is all glowering fury, champing at the bit to brandish the electrodes at Parker’s emotionally racked Katurian.
Director Simon Prast manages the difficult tonal shifts effectively as the mood lurches from cruel melodrama to grim hilarity, from appalling to touching, while maintaining a discomforting tension. Only in the first half, during the brothers’ scene, does the pace flag. And after interval, the confronting crucifixion story produces some stomach-churning images. According to Katurian, “there are no happy endings in real life”, but McDonagh keeps you guessing.
Superbly acted and constantly intriguing, The Pillowman is an unnerving experience.
THE PILLOWMAN, by Martin McDonagh; directed by Simon Prast, ATC, Maidment Theatre, Auckland, until September 15.
