The Pillowman @ Outcry Theater
—Jan Farrington
"Is it a crime to write a story?" --Katurian
Two brothers in a prison cell, under suspicion from a totalitarian state for brutal crimes against children.
Brother Michal, brain-damaged and childish, asks brother Katurian to tell him a favorite story. Katurian is a writer of short stories, 400 so far, only two of them "nice". Michal, stretched out on the cell's one mattress, leans back into his brother's lap and looks up with a happy smile, waiting for "Once upon a time."
And that's as sweet as it gets (by far) in Outcry Theatre's fierce and challenging production of Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman.
Directed with precision and energy (even the stage "business" and blocking are notable) by Becca Johnson-Spinos, the company's co-founder, Pillowman is an electric, unsettling experience, and not for everyone. In fact, if you find yourself sailing too easily past this plot and these characters, you might want to ask yourself a few hard questions. This story should upset us. (The older woman I spoke with before the play, a constant and serious theatre-goer, made it through Act Two, and was seen no more.)
McDonagh, a British-Irish playwright and screenwriter, is known for his mix of the horrifying and the humorous--the blackest of black comedy found in the stage plays The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Cripple of Inishmaan, and in the films In Bruges and (most recently) The Banshees of Inisherin. He's won major awards both in Britain and the U.S., and could arguably be considered our most successful big-name practitioner of the mid-century avant-garde Theatre of Cruelty--or at least an inheritor of its style and substance.
He's very good at what he does.
To begin with, the production is crammed with compelling design elements, from Cory Garrett's set (love the fancifully sketched-on furniture and the menacing stacks of storage boxes) to Jason Johnson-Spinos' wild song & music picks. The Old Stone Cottage in Addison is just the right size for feeling almost too-close to the action: this show has both a "Blood special effects" artist and a fight choreographer. Enough said.
The characters are brilliantly cast; again, kudos to director Johnson-Spinos and co-founder husband Jason. Bryce Lederer is both engaging and strange as Katurian the writer--on edge, arrogant, placating, and deeply frightened of being pulled in for who-knows-what (or does he know?) by the state police. He's so certain he's the best--and seems unphased when the police point out that several of his stories follow the pattern of recent child murders. Is his storytelling truth or fiction, literature or a corruption of public morals? It begins to dawn that Katurian might contain more than a bit of McDonagh himself, battling against critics of his work.
The two police detectives play out a good cop/bad cop routine with Katurian--though "good" might be a stretch. Ryan Maffei's tightly wound Tupolski wears a natty suit and measures his words--but as he leans in toward Katurian, his sharp eyes and pointed profile reveal the hunter. He lets partner Ariel (Connor McMurray) bring the muscle and menace. Sleeves rolled-up and ready, Ariel's physical moves on the prisoner set us up for more and more brutality to become a "given"--the new normal of this terrible place. As the "spastic, subnormal, retarded" brother Michal, Will Frederick can be gently funny and pathetic. But he never overplays the role, subtly adding the clues and nuance that will let us, gradually, know Michal as more than he seems. The brothers' relationship is admirably natural, and provides the only warmth we can huddle around, meta-theatrically speaking.
Harper Caroline Peters takes on a striking cluster of child and child-like roles, each one distinct and memorable. Haley Peters and Cary Bazan play the brothers' Mother and Father, plus two other sets of parents--all of them overdue for a quick call to Child Protective Services (if only our cell phones weren't off). Their first iteration, in stylish blacks reminiscent of Morticia and Gomez (very intriguing costumes from designer Benjamin McElroy), gives us a slightly comic view of them--and perhaps impairs our ability to judge which version of their actions is true. Is their raising of Katurian and Michal a horrific "artistic experiment" or a trick? Perhaps their son Katurian's line about "a puzzle without a solution" applies not just to his writing, but to Mom and Dad and the whole bloody play. What's true, what's a lie, what's a "story," and what's an invention of the highly unreliable state?
In fact, as competing and contradictory stories and memories roil the plot, the ground seems to go out from under us--even to the point that we begin to feel a smidge of Stockholm Syndrome empathy for the two detectives--both of whom might have been as beaten up by life as the brothers and the victims real or imagined. And through it all, we discover that Katurian is less worried about death threats and physical pain than he is about his stories. They must survive, even if he doesn't.
I'm still mulling that over, and having entirely fictional arguments with McDonagh in my head. But no matter--what I do know is that Outcry can be proud of this difficult, push-the-envelope production. It's an experience.
WHEN: February 16-25, 2024
WHERE: Old Stone Cottage,
WEB: https://www.outcrytheatre.com/
