The Pillowman – review

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The Decadent Theatre Company bring Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman to Ireland for the very first time in this colourful production. Katurian K Katurian (middle name Katurian) is the play’s main character, but for large parts is also its narrator. Katurian is a writer whose stories are found to be identical in content to a series of child murders, so he is arrested and the stories are examined. His truism, “The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story,” immediately infuriates his interrogators, Ariel and Tupolski. They want to understand the prisoner’s character and motivations. Katurian insists he just tells stories. But as the play develops, the tales he tells begin to reveal his own past and the reasons why his imagination is so dark.

The play is structured around these stories — a gruesome yet playful Tim Burton come Brothers Grimm series of fairytales. For their telling, Katurian (Peter Campion) becomes narrator as events from his past, and also his imagination, are acted out behind him. These are the play’s most successful scenes. Campion sits with his face lit, whilst behind him the hydraulic stage-set slides apart to reveal an open façade of rooms from Katurian’s childhood home. As an audience, we can almost see a thought bubble extending from Kanturian’s head around the painful memories of an abusive childhood.

Despite this, Katurian displays a remarkable tenderness towards his brother with an intellectual disability (Michael Ford-FitzGerald), and naivety with the interrogators. Better known as a stand-up comic, David McSavage as Tupolski brings a deadpan tone and timing to the role, but certainly lacks the range of Campion. However, he is by no means outshone next to seasoned stage actor Gary Lydon, playing his more aggressive but emotional partner, Ariel.

For a play (and indeed playwright) that has received such accolades as the 2004 Olivier Award, the triumph of the performance is undoubtedly in its production. Director Andrew Flynn and sound designer Carl Kennedy together create a mood which is enjoyably entrancing and absurd. For a play about storytelling, Decadent have succeeded particularly in making Kanturian’s storytelling scenes utterly transfixing. McDonagh fans will no doubt disagree, but the play itself comes across as an excuse for his excellent fairytales. The result is that the plot development between each of them manifests as an unwelcome pause rather than The Pillowman’s real story.

The Pillowman runs at the Gaiety until March 14

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