The Pillowman

The Pillowman

Product Description

While still in his twenties, the Anglo-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh has filled houses in New York and London, been showered with the theatre worlds most prestigious accolades, and electrified audiences with his cunningly crafted and outrageous tragicomedies. With echoes of Stoppard and Kafka, his latest drama, The Pillowman, is the viciously funny and seriously disturbing tale of a writer in an unnamed totalitarian state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories and their similarities to a number of child-murders occurring in his town.

Rate Points :4.5
Binding :Paperback
Label :Dramatist's Play Service
Manufacturer :Dramatist's Play Service
ProductGroup :Book
Studio :Dramatist's Play Service
Publisher :Dramatist's Play Service
EAN :9780822221005
Price :$7.50USD
Lowest Price :$7.03USD
Customer Reviews"Because you told me to..."
Rating Point :4 Helpful Point :0
Part of my Eng comp class reading - but fantastic. Katurian as the author and controller (or attempted) of the entire story and the stories within the story - it is so much happening in a world where nothing seems to happen - the "black, black gloom of the empty, empty, empty forest." The totalitarian police - and each characters backstory echoing in the stories of Katurian is also a circle that loops back onto itself. Hoping to see this play performed live shortly. The inner "Pillowman" story reminded me of some of DeLints short stories.

A Shocking Play. Beware!
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :0
In June of 2005 I saw this play in a Broadway production. I was struck by the acting of Billy Crudup as Katurian, in a tour de force performance, but far less impressed by a hammy Jeff Goldblum as Detective Tupolski. As usual playwright Martin McDonagah was practicing his skills as the master of shock and awe with a bloody, gruesome work of black comedy. To say that he goes to extremes (blood, gore and mutilations) in his dramas is an understatement.
An audience to McDonagh must be made distinctly uncomfortable and unhinged, never to leave the theater complacent and untouched by the gruesome side of existence. His humor and dialogue owe something to the absurdist tradition. Crudup said people go to the theater to be manipulated, and that is certainly what McDonagh does even when people walk out on the macabre horror.
Katurian is an unpublished writer who penned a number of stories involving the murders or tortures of children. His mentally challenged brother (not necessarily retarded) Michal takes it upon himself to reenact the stories in the real world. Two police detectives are not afraid to torture a confession out of Katurian because they believe his stories incited his brother into committing the atrocities. Vicious and sadistic parents become part of the equation.
Irony and humor are often served side by side with the violence and mayhem. Scenes from the past of terrible childhood events such as suffocations are acted out on a level above the stage.
The three-hour play has power and focus in the first act, but then the focus shifts in Act 2 (in the staged version) to the interrogator detective, Jeff Goldblum, who tended to ingratiate himself with the audience. He tells a long story about a Chinese man that really puts the play off track with Crudup marginalized for a time. Comparing this play to Doubt, this play lacks unity of purpose or significant meaning. The theme, if there is any, gets lost. The only theme seems to be the power of the storyteller.
But is the whole play just another of Katurians stories? Is it real? Is the storyteller responsible for the mimicking of his stories by others? Does he encourage it? A twist comes when the third murder is a reenactment of one of his sunnier stories. If he dies, Katurian still wants his stories to live. They are why he lived, are more important than his life. Is the play all brilliant sound and violent fury signifying nothing?

I Was a Good Writer
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :0
Martin McDonagh is one of the living legends of British theatre, a voice so brutal and yet so moving that we, the audience, find it very difficult to respond. I give The Pillowman five stars, but that does not mean I "like" this work--it makes himself immune to being liked. Rather, I give it five stars because, like a virus, it works his way into the cells of my being and refuses to leave me unchanged.

This is the only one of McDonaghs seven famous plays which is not associated with a real place in Ireland, or part of a longer arc of plays. Unlike The Beauty Queen of Leenane or The Cripple of Inishmaan, it is not necessary to be familiar with any other plays to understand this one. But the author does assume youre a literate person, familiar with the likes of Kafkas The Trial or Orwells Nineteen Eighty-Four, both of which it heavily alludes to.

Even if youve never seen this play, reviews and publicity have already told you that Katurian is a frustrated amateur writer who is being questioned by a pair of police who dont answer to anyone. His brother is being tortured down the hall. Katurian is the ultimate unreliable narrator, even though he only narrates at the very end of the play: he has no idea the effects he has on everyone around him. Like a hurricane, he is blind to the devastation he leaves in his wake. You cant trust a word that comes out of his mouth, even as you cant help feeling sorry for his predicament.

But hes not the only unreliable character in the play. Alliances are made and broken in the space of a sentence. Promises are only worth the air theyre made of. As Detective Tupolski says, "I am a high-ranking police officer in a totalitarian fing dictatorship. What are you doing taking my word for anything?"

The play challenges you to come into its world and answer its questions. Does free speech extend to cover lies? How about Katurians gruesome stories--are they free speech? Are they "speech" when someone, maybe Katurian himself, starts acting them out? And why is the interplay between the characters so bleakly funny?

This is not a light or frivolous drama, not something youll ever see in a school play. And its staging, with multiple locations and remarkable on-stage violence, will require a very heightened sense of theatricality which will push many producers to their limits. But it is also an experience which will not leave you unchanged in your seat. One of the top dramatists of his generation, Martin McDonagh is a force to be reckoned with, a force of nature, like a hurricane--blind to the devastation in his wake.

Stunning! Entertaining! Brutal! The years best!!
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :0
This is perhaps the most brutal, most tragic play this side of Dont Pet the Zookeeper! Furiously theatrical and not the least bit forgiving, this play will sear itself into your mind. It will forever change the way you look at theatre.

Wow.
Rating Point :5 Helpful Point :0
Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman (Dramatists Play Service, 2003)

The first scene of The Pillowman plays out about like youd expect a writer somewhere in an unnamed totalitarian state (given the names, its set somewhere in Eastern Europe) is being interrogated by a couple of policemen. A series of child killings is occurring that are quite reminiscent of those in the writers unpublished stories. (If it sounds like a mix of Closetland and The Mystery of Rampo, youre thinking along the right lines.) He keeps protesting his innocence. One of the policemen threatens to torture the writers mentally challenged brother, then heads off into another room, and after a while we hear screams. Its all relatively disturbing, but nothing entirely unexpected given the subject matter.

Then comes scene 2, and all the sudden The Pillowman is something entirely different than we think it is. (You know that bit in Se7en where Morgan Freeman does a complete about-face during the climax? Yeah. Except even farther off the track.) Different, and even more interesting than it already was. Gripping, even. I read through the first scene last night somewhat leisurely, then went to sleep. When I started reading scene 2, I was hooked, and didnt put the book down until Id finished it.

All the film comparisons are because, of all the plays Ive read over the last couple of years, this is the one I can see being most powerful if ever translated to a film (a la Bug). While its still got that theatrical sensibility about it-- when one is dealing with a stage play, one does a lot more telling than showing-- its plotted much more like a film script. Twists abound. Characters do subtle things that presage monumental changes later on. Most of the telling that goes on when you dont have many ways to show things is happening between the lines. And it all works. Most of the time it works brilliantly. (Theres one character whose outlook at the end, and his process of getting there, seemed a bit clich. But thats a minor point.) Few, if any, words are wasted here, and most of them seem measured for their punch. This is lean, muscular stuff in the vein of someone like James Dickey. It almost sings, though the song coming from it sounds more like a dirge.

Its fabulous all the way around. I cant recommend it highly enough, and its a shoo-in for my ten best reads of the year list.

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