stage Run Rain Man, 48 Hours, Stalin, Mother Goose, The Brothers Grimm and The Passion of The Christ through the mind of Stephen King, add a dash of Kafka, a smidgeon of James Kilpatrick and a Beijing Book Review and you’ll have The Pillowman.
It’s easy to see why Martin McDonagh’s work won an Olivier Best New Play Award in 2004 before garnering a pair of Tonys from six nominations in 2005. The “life imitates art” theme incorporates horrific child abuse, brutal torture and a half-dozen murders yet miraculously manages a Hollywood ending, albeit one from a mind like Quentin Tarantino’s.
 Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman puts the "sense" into "senseless violence" at Live Arts. |
Opening with a police interrogation of a failed writer whose stories are plots for a series of child murders, the play twists and turns with Hitchcockian skill. The plot builds from the interrogation, and the audience is led into the chilling tales and the mind behind them, with the stream of word-/fist-/gun-play from two antagonistic cops to guide them to the killer.
Although he dropped a few lines in the preview performance, Michael Horan (as the writer, initialed “K.K.K.,”) is solid throughout the three-hour, three-act production and truly shines when, encased in his own ego, he narrates his grisly and suspicious stories. His mentally damaged brother (played by Christos Vangelopoulos) steals Act Two, alternating between brilliant naiveté and cold-blooded viciousness. The pair of cops, played by Satch Huizenga and Mark Washington, begin the play slowly but sparkle in the final act.
Interspersing the “once upon a time” attitude of Mother Goose with the biting visual satire of “Family Guy” or “South Park,” director Lydia Horan makes wonderful use of John Gibson’s up-down set and the troop of actors filling K.K.K.’s freakish imagination.
Strange as it seems to laugh in horror, McDonagh’s writing earns chuckles amidst a macabre conglomeration. McDonagh truly takes the audience on a wild and relentlessly savage trip, yet manages to make sense of it all. The man can write, no doubt about it.