>>PREVIEW
THE PILLOWMAN
Runs until March 25
Ground Zero Theatre and Hit & Myth Productions
The Studio, Vertigo Theatre (Tower Centre)
Martin McDonagh is a playwright who has built his substantial reputation on writing dark comedies. Now enjoying a double run in Calgary with Theatre Calgary’s production of The Cripple of Inishmaan and the Ground Zero Theatre/Hit & Myth co-production of The Pillowman, both of McDonagh’s plays offer two separate dark perspectives. In The Cripple of Inishmaan, a handicapped young man attempts to escape the drudgery of island life, while in The Pillowman, a totalitarian government arrests and interrogates a short story writer after a series of brutal child murders.
Given this same choice, it’s no coincidence that Theatre Calgary opted for the first.
Gaining the rights to McDonagh’s dystopian horror comedy was a boon for Ground Zero and Hit & Myth, whose previous collaboration on Urinetown was the first of a must-do slate of shows that also included The Pillowman. Helmed by director Kevin McKendrick, who co-directed Urinetown, the two companies’ second co-production of the season boasts an impressive cast of some of Calgary’s best comic talents. Even in the dark world created by designer Terry Gunvordahl, comedy tempered by the macabre is at the forefront.
Arrested by a pair of brutal police officers, Tupolski (Andy Curtis) and Ariel (David Trimble), with no qualms about playing "bad cop, slightly less sadistic cop," Katurian (Luhning) is accused of a string of horrifying child murders. Uncannily mirroring several of the author’s over 400 unpublished stories, the murders seem tailor-made to Katurian’s specifications. In the totalitarian world of the play, the accusation itself is tantamount to a death sentence.
Drawing on the sheer horror of the murders and of the disturbing subject matter of Katurian’s short stories ("101 Ways to Skewer a Fuckin' Five Year Old," as Tupolski puts it), The Pillowman adds a horrifying childhood trauma experienced by Katurian and his damaged older brother, Michal (Trevor Leigh). The result is a play permeated on all levels by disturbing stories, creating a work whose own success in London and New York is a testament to audiences’ almost limitless appetite for horror.
"Why is CSI the number one show?" asks McKendrick. "There’s this fascination for luridness and this play asks that of ourselves."
But even in the pursuit of this fascination, The Pillowman often shies away from direct visual horror. Though their sadism is genuine, at least in its psychological effects, many of Tupolski and Ariel’s interrogation techniques rely more on the perception of harm than on manifest torture. Following suit, the play itself is largely an exercise in suspense and threats, playing on the horrifying images that Katurian’s own stories conjure.
"Much more powerful than any film image is the image that plays out in an audience’s imagination," says McKendrick. "And that’s where theatre, more than any other art form, is able to harness the audience’s perspective.
"That threat (of violence) is palpable," he adds. "If he says the wrong thing, the cop brings out the gun, or electrodes. That palpable terror is something we’re trying to tap into."
Though its producers are reluctant to reveal any of Gunvordahl’s design specifics, Pillowman doesn’t entirely leave its world to the audience’s imagination. In its original productions, many of Katurian’s stories are played out as otherworldly fairy tales. Between all this, the intangible threats of violence, the eerie renderings of gruesome short stories, the play also elicits comedy from the same horror, which is no small feat.
If plays straddling the line between comedy and any other genre suffer from any persistent weakness, it is often in the audience. Faced with uncertainty or ambivalent characters who leap between the serious and the comic, many audience members feel compelled to cover the resulting tension with nervous laughter or opt to simply remain quiet.
For The Pillowman’s producers, the audience is a non-issue. While other plays strike a balance between their darker and comic elements, The Pillowman is injected with horror dark enough to actually be unmistakably hilarious. McDonagh’s reputation for dark comedies, after all, has been rightly earned.
"That was something we talked about early on," says Joel Cochrane, Hit & Myth’s artistic producer, of audience uncertainty. "The world exists where anything bad can happen at any time in the hands of the police. Out of that tension the humour comes – it becomes pretty clear where it’s OK to laugh."
"I think McDonagh is anticipating that," adds McKendrick, "and it’s probably because of what he’s learned in plays like The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which is so black (that) the violence actually becomes hilarious because it’s so brutal and so ridiculous given the context." |
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