Tom Foreman’s new interpretation of Martin McDonagh’s sinister comedy, The Pillowman, beckons to its audience from the murkiest reaches of the human imagination, enticing us into a disorienting world of perversion and cruelty. The production promises to be affecting, funny and, Tom assures me, well-stocked with fake blood...

"The Pillowman promises to be intense and challenging: an unflinching embrace of one of McDonagh’s most discomfiting plays"

Martin McDonagh, of Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri fame, is a master of dark comedy. His writing has the enviable knack of marrying bloodthirstiness with warmth and tenderness, plumbing the gloomiest depths of humanity while also celebrating its greatest triumphs. The Pillowman strikes this balance in a particularly moving way, presenting us with characters whose seemingly irredeemable cruelty is tempered by moments of dreamy introspection and vulnerability. The play unfolds in an unnamed totalitarian state, centring on the writer, Katurian Katurian, whose gruesome stories have caught the police’s attention due to their strange similarity to the recent murder of three local children. As he is questioned by the irascible detective duo, Ariel and Tupolski, the wickedness of Katurian’s tales begin to invade the narrative, imbuing the action with darkness and disrupting our ability to separate reality from fiction. However, our headlong descent into this twisted world of fairytales-gone-wrong is often stalled by little eruptions of comedic brightness and contemplative softness that rise unexpectedly out of the shadows. It is this careful observation of the see-sawing nature of the human spirit which makes McDonagh, in Tom’s words, such an ‘extraordinary writer’.

From what I saw in rehearsals, this production of The Pillowman promises to be intense and challenging: an unflinching embrace of one of McDonagh’s most discomfiting plays. Tom tells me that he has taken inspiration from Antonin Artaud’s concept of the ‘theatre of cruelty’, a visceral form of theatre whose aim is to arrest the spectator’s senses, testing the limits of their sensibility while remaining consistently and unmistakably real. A stripped back, monochrome colour scheme will help to focus and intensify, making the periodic splashes of violence all the more striking.

Tom has also chosen to depart from the usual all-male casting of the play, by introducing a female actor (Claire Chung) into the role of Tupolski. In this way, the usually hyper-masculine power struggle which simmers between the two policemen is subtly transformed into a implicit exploration of gender politics, as the gratuitous brutality of a petulant Ariel (Sam Tannenbaum), is quietly ridiculed by a calm and measured Tupolski. Therefore, although Ariel takes every opportunity to desperately ‘flex his masculinity’, it is his female colleague who controls and directs each scene. This reversal of sexual power structures – which the cast achieve without making any changes to the script – lends a contemporary resonance to the production, so injecting it with an even greater depth of meaning.

Heart-warming and blood-curdling in equal measure, this new take on McDonagh’s Olivier Award winning play is a thoughtful and intelligent production which is sure to stay with you long after you leave the theatre.

Performances will run from Wednesday 27th February until Saturday 2nd March at the Bateman Auditorium, Caius.