Brian Brennan and Patrick Peterson
Reviewed by G. Bruce Smith
Long Beach Playhouse
Through Sept. 28
RECOMMENDED
Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is brilliant at combining violence, dark humor and touching human relationships into compelling narratives. The Pillowman, in an excellent production at the Long Beach Playhouse, is yet another superb example of McDonagh’s unique talents. And it goes even farther than many of his other works in exploring the world of totalitarianism and the indispensable importance of storytelling to humankind.
The Pillowman opens with a harsh interrogation of a young writer named Katurian (Brian Brennan) living under an unnamed totalitarian regime. Police Detective Tupolski (Paul Vroom) plays the intimidating “good” cop to angry, violent bad cop Officer Ariel (Patrick Peterson). Katurian doesn’t know why he has been brought in for interrogation, but he’s getting lots of questions about the many stories he has written that have one theme in common: gruesome violence to children.
They’re just stories, he argues. But, his interrogators counter, some have been published in The Libertad, presumably a magazine that is not friendly to the current regime. And, as Tupolski says, “We like to execute writers.”
It turns out that this is not just a case of a writer who might pose some vague threat to the authoritarian state. The detective insists there’s a story under the story. Katurian is perplexed. Meanwhile, his developmentally disabled brother Michal (Jeff Cheezum) is being held in an adjacent jail cell and is ostensibly being tortured, much to Katurian’s horror.
It’s at this point that the plot takes a jarring turn into a bizarre, Disney-meets-Grimm Brothers fairy tale telling of one of Katurian’s grotesque stories — one that will play a key role in the unraveling of the on-stage narrative.
In Act II, Katurian, who has since been tortured, is taken to his brother’s cell, with the execution of both of them potentially imminent. We learn of the horror of the brothers’ past and the deep devotion they have for each other. We also learn of the strange comfort that Michal takes in Katurian’s tales, which his brother has read to him many times over the years. And we learn the real — and horrifying — reason that the brothers have been arrested.
Also in Act II, we hear more of Katurian’s grim stories of child abuse, including his story (also titled “The Pillowman”) which poses the question of whether children are better off dead as opposed to growing up and having miserable lives. (There’s another tale of a defiant child who suffers greatly at the hands of her parents that mirrors resistance to violent totalitarian regimes.)
In the final act, the interrogation resumes as Katurian struggles to keep his stories alive past his death. The scene takes surprising twists and reveals the humanity of the two policemen.
Despite the bleak subject matter, McDonagh brings moments of humor, compassion and even tenderness to his script.
In the Long Beach production, director Carl daSilva clearly demonstrates a deep connection and reverence for this exceptional script. It’s reflected in the superb work of the ensemble members who do not have an easy task. That’s particularly apparent in the riveting second act in which Brennan and Cheezum, who play the brothers, take the audience on a roller coaster of revelations and emotions.
The uncredited scenic design underscores the discordant pulse of the play, which includes going from a bare interrogation room to a happy-not-happy artificial fairy tale setting, complete with scrim that is reminiscent of strange shadow puppetry. And the simple (also uncredited) sound design – whose most prominent feature is a faint buzzing vibration that somehow evokes a frightening interrogation room – is spot on.
Long Beach Playhouse, 5021 E. Anaheim St., Long Beach; Fri.-Sat., 8 pm., Sun., 2 pm; lbplayhouse.org. Running time: two hours and, 30 minutes with an intermission.
