Before this past weekend, the Saybrook Underbrook Theater had probably never played host to so many scenes of mutilation and torment. The Pillowman, a YDC play that ran from Thurs., Nov. 5 to Sat., Nov 7, does not flinch from plunging into the depths of human nature. Written by Martin McDonagh, The Pillowman depicts child abuse and murder with an intensity that verges on the absurd alongside a grotesque strain of dark humor. Director Alcindor Leadon, SM ’17, and producer Noah Kim, BR ’18, wrestle admirably with the weight of the story, imbuing the production with alternating tones of horror and humor. The Pillowman at times exploits its emotional ambiguity to achieve remarkable dramatic tension, but its ingenuity wears off by the end of its grueling length.
Set in a dystopian police state, the play begins in a sparse interrogation room. Detectives Tupolski (Will Nixon, PC ’19) and Ariel (Aaron Orbey, DC ’19) question writer Katurian Katurian (Ivan Kirwan-Taylor, JE ’18) about his connection to a string of child murders in his town, after noticing close similarities between the plots of several of Katurian’s grotesque stories and the grisly details of the three murders. As the interrogation proceeds, Katurian learns that the police have also detained his brother Michel (Simon Horn, JE ’18). Soon, the audience discovers that Katurian and Michel came from an abusive home, and Michel suffers from an ambiguous mix of mental handicaps and psychological trauma due to his ordeal. While the detectives search for the truth about the murders, Katurian and Michel embark on a parallel quest to separate fact from fiction in their own troubled relationship.
Fluidly blending reality and the fantasy of Katurian’s stories, The Pillowman offers a compelling commentary on artistic freedom and the power of writing. The police condemn Katurian because of his writing, and as a result, he seems to defiantly stand for freedom of expression. His defiance, however, turns out to be more than complicated than a moralistic stance: it becomes apparent that Katurian is not merely pushing the boundaries of fiction. His stories are much more than works of imagination—Katurian uses them to revise his own personal history. By writing, he embraces his own traumatic past and takes control of his memory.
The figure of the Pillowman embodies Katurian’s instinct to alter the past. In one of Katurian’s stories, the Pillowman travels back in time to convince children to commit suicide to avoid their painful futures. What makes the play even more disturbing is that the Pillowman actually does appear to be a tender figure. The similarities between the imaginary Pillowman and Katurian suggest the way fiction and reality inform each other. It soon becomes difficult to separate the real from the imaginary, for Katurian’s identity seems intrinsically linked to his stories. The effect is extremely enthralling, for the audience experiences the same confusion as the characters on stage. Although Katurian writes the stories, it is Michel who holds the audience’s attention and embodies the play’s narrative ambiguity. In a strange way, he mirrors, or even guides, the audience’s interpretation of the play. Listening to Katurian’s stories with the audience, Michel jokes about their gruesome contents, and we actually laugh along. The presence of humor throughout the play implicates the audience in viewing and actually being entertained by the disturbing action on stage. Michel’s inability to distinguish between fact and fiction also mirrors the audience’s attempt to perceive the true parts of the conflicting histories each character presents. The play stresses the fact that Michel is psychologically damaged, which makes the connection between Michel and the audience troubling.
The relationship between Katurian and Michel is the most intriguing aspect of The Pillowman, but the play persistently draws attention away from the brothers. The play interweaves narrated enactments of Katurian’s stories alongside the main plot in the police station, but they are more distracting than dramatic. The stories are simplistic fairy tales that are interesting mostly due to their shock value, which wears off after repeated scenes of mutilation and abuse. Gore becomes gratuitous at a certain point: several members of the audience were visibly disturbed during the enactments. The production is most compelling at its simplest, when the characters conversed in the sparse interrogation room or prison cell, and becomes less convincing as the action increases.
The second act brings us farther away from the sibling relationship at the heart of the story, as it attempts to delve into the personal lives of Ariel and Tupolski. But despite the admirable efforts of Nixon and Orbey, they fail to display significant character depth. The detectives function better when they are charismatic interrogators whose personal lives are mysterious. These side-plots add to the play’s total length of about two and a half hours, which could have been cut down considerably while retaining the play’s compelling features. The sheer length of the play detracts from appreciation of its ingenious structure.
The Pillowman manages to foster sympathy in the audience for characters who would not normally seem to be sympathetic with its effective dynamics of mirroring, but the play at times suffers from its own scope. The production impressively conveyed the complexity of the narrative structure and its interweaving of fact and fiction, but its length and side-plots distracted from its essential success.