The Read Through

First time that I’ve read a play by Martin McDonagh. Having seen several of his films I had a sense of what to expect – dark humour, bursts of wince inducing violence and distinctive, intelligently drawn characters who speak with linguistic fire and flair. And The Pillowman certainly delivers these elements with gusto.

The play’s central character is the writer Katurian, suffering a totalitarian style interrogation not for, we might expect, crimes against the state but because a series of murders mirror his own, quite horrific, stories. Those stories are woven across the play, allowing them to haunt the imagination rather than overwhelm the more realistic setting with their utter awfulness. The style and structure of the piece allows for reflection on the horrors of the human imagination and its consequences without falling into an indulgent sense of shock for the sake of shock.

And while the totalitarian setting and the horror / crime story were complementary, it did leave me wanting to see the play told from a more realistic standpoint, without the potentially distancing effect of it’s environment. But overall this is a play that gets under the skin and leaves a sense of admirably unresolved tension between art, individual liberty and which stories have the right to exist.