Joyin

John McCallum | June 06, 2008
The Pillowman
By Martin McDonagh. Company B. Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney, June 4. Tickets: $54. Bookings: (02) 9699 3444. Until July 13.

THIS dark fairytale, about the fate of a writer of dark fairytales, is stuffed full of ideas but it is curiously disengaged from the real world. It is set in an imaginary police state but has little to do with politics or power. It includes the details of several gruesome child murders, told in a sort of jolly Grand Guignol style but, for all its black comedy, it isn't very disturbing, which is a bit disturbing.

Martin McDonagh's play opens with the writer, Katurian, being tortured by two comic policemen who are interested in the mysterious and evocative Borges-like fables he writes. It soon becomes clear that they are investigating a series of murders that seem to be based on his stories. He has a simple-minded brother whom they are apparently torturing in the next room. Beyond that I won't say anything because the plot depends on a series of revelations that make up much of the interest.

Craig Ilott's production treads the line between comedy and horror without bringing the two together, except in brief moments in the powerful emotional relationship between Katurian and his troubled brother Michal, played very well respectively by Damon Herriman and Steve Rodgers.

Marton Csokas and Dan Wyllie, as the policemen whose vaudevillean relationship parallels the serious relationship of their victims, are funny, and they have some great nasty lines of dialogue and business. But their characters are based on a comic-duo stereotype that is simplistic parody.

The brilliant set design by Nicholas Dare creates a bleak prison interrogation room, with long walls of grey concrete bricks that keep suddenly opening to show, in bright colour and a mockingly fantastical style, the scenes of horror.

In one of the best of these reveals is a most beautifully staged murder but it turns out to be just another story.
Jethro Woodward's fine sound design is understated and brooding, swelling in volume in some scenes to alert us that all is not well.
We listen to many of Katurian's dark stories, which he is obsessed with passing on to the world, at the cost of his life if necessary.
At one point he refers to his work, perhaps self-mockingly, as "somethingesque". The word sums up McDonagh's glib style. It has no voice of its own, it's all pastiche, and yet it purports to have something to say about violence against children.



SEE Next 2 post for pics ..A must see piece of theatre