The hate mail started pouring in before “The Pillowman” even opened.
“Dark tragedy has its place, but I don’t go to the theater with the expectation that I will be insulted by transparent grossness for its own sake,” one cranky-pants complained.
Well, that’s one point of view. Here’s another: “The Pillowman” is a perversely funny play that made me snort like the twisted fourth-grader I once was. I haven’t felt as titillated in that “I can’t believe they are going there” way since I was 8, when those blind people in “Tales from the Crypt” trapped their cruel keeper in a dark maze lined with hundreds of razor blades – then released a half- starved dog.
It gave me nightmares.
It’s my favorite film.
If theater can make you feel titillated, mesmerized and intense at once, as “The Pillowman” is doing at the Denver Center Theatre Company, I say, bring it on.
Yes, Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman” is a gruesome, macabre bit of storytelling, and it’s too long at nearly three hours, but anyone who thinks it is transparent isn’t seeing the forest for the blood.
This is a tale about storytelling itself. It’s about how we are all capable of imagining the grisliest acts of horror; only we call those who write them auteurs … and those who act upon them monsters. It’s about how children are damaged by the hands of their fathers, not by the words read to them from books. It’s about protecting art, no matter the cost or content.
“The Pillowman” was inspired by McDonagh’s real-life relationship with his brother, one the writer has characterized as “love, love, love … and a tiny spark of hate.”
Director Anthony Powell’s campfire tale opens to the sound of a contorted lullaby from “Mary Poppins” (“Don’t lie down upon your bed”). We’re in an interrogation room in an unspecified totalitarian state – though Powell has removed any obstacle from the script that might prevent you from thinking, oh, perhaps Washington?
Katurian has written 400 stories, each depicting hideous things happening to kids. How hideous? In one, a bearded girl who believes she is “The Little Jesus” is beaten and buried alive by her foster parents.
Katurian (a terrific Scott Ferrara) and his simpleton brother Michal (a heartbreaking David Ivers) have been arrested because there have been copycat killings. Now a mute girl is missing – perhaps buried alive – and bullying cops Tupolski (Larry Hecht) and Ariel (an unrecognizable Douglas Harmsen) will go to any gleeful length to find her before it’s too late.
A delicious irony is that their torture methods equal in hideousness anything in Katurian’s stories. But doesn’t it make you chuckle to meet a sadistic torturer named after the Shakespearean sprite who embodies the power of good?
Katurian is ordered to read, then defend, his dark tales. As he does, actors (including three adorable children clearly having the time of their lives) play them out in a kind of treehouse tableau. These cartoonish scenes take place behind flat scrims to convey living storybook illustrations. This inspired effect reinforces the notion that “this is all just a story.” And like all good stories, it’s not what they show you that’s so disturbing – it’s what you must imagine.
One of the most horrific tales is one McDonagh actually wrote when he was 16 (his brother’s enthusiastic response encouraged Martin to pursue a writing career). It’s about a boy whose loving parents nurture his development as a writer, while simultaneously, systematically torturing his brother in the next room for years. His screams seep into the boy’s blood, you see, making him a better storyteller. In the play, this may be the real back-story of Katurian and Michal.
Things get more consequential when Michal confesses to being the copycat killer, following his brother’s blueprint. This puts the issue of writer responsibility solidly on the table, which McDonagh addresses head-on when Katurian asserts: “The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.”
But it turns out we have four storytellers here, and so the issue of “truth in the telling” becomes central. Katurian asks Michal what he has told the cops. When Michal says, “Just the truth,” Katurian asks back, “Which particular truth?”
What place should truth have in any good yarn?
No one understands McDonagh’s sinister comic sensibility better than Powell. His noble cast sallied forth on opening night despite a wicked bug that sent Ferrara to a hospital the day before. He was in an obviously weakened state, which oddly accentuated his beleaguered character’s passionate drive to save his stories, if not himself. Ivers is riveting as a vulnerable manchild straight from “Of Mice and Men.” Hecht and Harmsen round out an impeccable foursome.
And when all is said and sliced, the most shocking thing about this play isn’t the bloodcurdling tales. It’s the twin acts of kindness that give it something akin to a happy ending.
Theater critic John Moore can be reached at 303-954-1056 or jmoore@denverpost.com.
“The Pillowman” | *** 1/2 RATING
DRAMA|Denver Center Theatre Company|Written by Martin McDonagh|Directed by Anthony Powell|Starring Scott Ferrara, Lawrence Hecht, Doug Harmsen and David Ivers|At the Ricketson Theatre, Denver Performing Arts Complex|THROUGH FEB. 24|6:30 p.m. Mondays-Wednesdays, 8 p.m. Thursdays-Fridays, 1:30 and 8 p.m. Saturdays|2 hours, 50 minutes|$36-$46| 303-893-4100, 866-464-2626, all King Soopers or denvercenter.org; 800-641-1222 outside Denver
