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For those sadistic souls who derive pleasure from pointless violence of language and action, I must recommend Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman, directed by Jeff Zinn, now playing at the Wellfleet Harbor Actor’s Theatre (WHAT). Otherwise, it is to be avoided at all costs.
The play’s protagonist, Katurian K. Katurian (Adam Harrington), is a writer in an unidentified totalitarian state – a bad choice of career. Policemen Tupolski (Tom Patrick Stephens) and Ariel (David Fraioli) bring him in for interrogation. Apparently his gruesome prose (almost all of which involves children being killed or tortured) has inspired some sick individual to act them out. If Katurian cannot prove his innocence, he and his mentally impaired brother (Marc Carver) will be executed by the day’s end.
Summer drama is meant to be light. If it is not light (the odd bit profundity is sometimes needed after all) it should at least be good. The Pillowman is neither. Instead, it is nauseatingly crude, horrifyingly facetious and altogether bad. Perhaps one could overlook the plot of torture, execution and child murder if it had a point. But McDonagh’s play seems to have no meaning aside from the explicit. At best the play articulates the cliché “Two wrongs don’t make a right.” And it hardly argues the importance of freedom of speech, as one might expect by the totalitarian setting created. Indeed, why must it be set in a totalitarian state? This setting adds nothing to the play but a bit more room for violence.
In the first act McDonagh plays with a theme of misunderstanding and the difficulties of communication. Whilst this allows for some clean laughs, the constant dithering soon gets to be too much. The humour then degrades to utter barbarism, with Ariel clenching Katurian’s testicles. If McDonagh is trying to emphasise police brutality, it has already been done and done better. The cheap laughs then return for a bit with Michal (Katurian’s brother) complaining for ten minutes about his “scratchy ass.” If the humour isn’t excessively dark, it is childish.
My quarrel with the production is mostly targeted at the play itself. The acting and direction was not so offensive, but at the same time not great. Zinn has been Artistic Director at WHAT since 1987 and did about as good a job as possible considering the weakness of the play. Harrington’s skill at storytelling is apparent and captivating. However, he has a habit of over-acting which makes his character seem unbelievable at times. Fraioli brings out his character’s insanity well and Stephens is good at playing the self-satisfied and cynical cop, while Carver makes for a convincing Michal. It was all very decent, but nothing spectacular.
The set, with its stucco wall, towering and bland, was not very inspired, but reflected well the desired totalitarian effect. The wall also acted as a screen for projection. Instead of allowing the audience to use their imagination, films of Katurian’s stories were cast onto the screen. But the film quality was so poor that the sadistic stories became risible. This mixing of screen and stage is becoming far too common. It can sometimes work well, but usually not, particularly when there is too much of it, as with WHAT’s production of The Pillowman.
There is no excuse for bad theatre and bad The Pillowman certainly is. That is not to say one should go into a small, sea-side theatre like WHAT expecting greatness, but this production was nevertheless a disappointment.
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