The Pillowman
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| The Pillowman | |
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| Written by | Martin McDonagh |
| Characters | Katurian Tupolski Ariel Michal |
| Date premiered | 13 November 2003 |
| Place premiered | Cottesloe Theatre London, England |
| Original language | English |
| Genre | Black comedy |
| IBDB profile | |
The Pillowman is a 2003 play by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. A black comedy, it tells the tale of Katurian, a fiction writer living in a police state who is interrogated about the gruesome content of his short stories, and their similarities to a number of bizarre child murders occurring in his town. The play received the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play, the 2004-5 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play, and two Tony Awards for production. It was nominated for the 2004 Evening Standard Award for Best New Play.
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[edit] Summary
Katurian, a writer of grisly short stories often showing violence against children, has been arrested by two detectives, Ariel and Tupolski, because some of his stories resemble recent child murders. When he hears that his brother Michal has confessed to the murders and implicated Katurian, he resigns himself to his execution but attempts to save his stories from destruction. The play includes both narrations and reenactments of several of Katurian's stories, most notably the autobiographical "The Writer and the Writer's Brother," which tells how Katurian developed his disturbed imagination by hearing the sounds of Michal being tortured by their parents.
[edit] Characters
Katurian A writer of gruesome short stories often involving children. His disturbed imagination was the result of having heard his brother being abused when they were younger. Consequently he killed his parents and looked after his brother. He is shocked by his arrest and totally oblivious to what his brother has done.
Tupolski The lead detective and the "good cop" in the interrogation. Cold and uncaring, he sees himself as detached from the people he aims to save, shocking his younger partner Ariel.
Ariel A brutal and violent detective who has a vendetta against anyone who commits crimes against children because of abuse in his own past. He ends up being more sympathetic towards Katurian and his stories than Tupolski.
Michal Katurian's brother, who is "slow to get things" following his years of abuse at the hands of his parents. In awe of his brother and fixated by the stories, he genuinely cannot see what he has done wrong.
Minor characters include the Parents/Foster Parents, The Little Jesus (girl), a boy
[edit] Plot synopsis
[edit] Act I
Scene 1: Ariel and Tupolski interrogate Katurian in a police room. At first Katurian does not know why he is being questioned, and thinks he is under suspicion of running political messages against the totalitarian dictatorship through his stories. The detectives and Katurian discuss grisly stories involving children. Ariel leaves the room, and soon after Michal is heard screaming in the next room. Ariel returns, his hand covered in blood from apparently torturing Michal, and tells Katurian that Michal has just confessed to killing three children, in association with Katurian. The first two children were murdered according to the patterns of the stories "The Little Apple Men" and "The Tale of the Town on the River." Katurian denies the allegations, stating that although his stories are gruesome it is the job of a storyteller to tell a story.
Scene 2 Sub plot: Katurian was raised by loving parents, who encouraged him to write, and for many years he wrote very happy stories. However, at nights he began to hear sounds of torture from the next room, and as a result he began to write more disturbing stories. One night, a note is slipped under the door, claiming that Katurian's brother has been tortured nightly for seven years as part of an artistic experiment to get Katurian to become a great writer. Katurian breaks down the door, only to find his parents, who were playing a trick on him, just pretending to be torturing a child. However, when Katurian returns years later, he discovers his brother's dead body hidden under the mattress, clutching the manuscript of a beautiful story, better than any of Katurian's, which Katurian burns. Katurian then interrupts his narrative to say that this ending was fabricated when he wrote the story: actually when Katurian broke down the door, he found Michal still alive. Katurian then smothered his parents with a pillow that very night in vengeance for his disabled brother and the pain they had put him through he then took over care for his brother.
[edit] Act II
Scene 1: Katurian and Michal are together in a cell, Katurian just having been tortured. Michal reveals that he had not been tortured, but rather cooperated entirely with Ariel, even screaming when Ariel asked him to. Michal admits to having killed the children, claiming that Katurian told him to do it by telling his stories. Michal also admits that the third child was murdered following the story "The Little Jesus," one of Katurian's most violent tales. Michal tells Katurian that he had read the written version of "The Writer and the Writer's Brother," and resented the changes from the real version, wishing instead that Katurian had written a happy ending for the two brothers. Katurian lulls Michal to sleep by telling him the story "The Little Green Pig," then smothers him to save him the pain of the execution. Katurian calls to the detectives, announcing his intention to confess to the crimes on the condition that his stories be spared.
Scene 2 Sub plot: Katurian tells the others the story of the Little Jesus, which is the story thought to be the source for the third murder. A young girl believes that she is the second coming of Jesus, and goes about blessing unsavory characters, to the dismay of her parents and the annoyance of others. When her parents are killed in a horrific accident, she is sent to live with abusive foster parents. Annoyed with her pretensions of divinity, the foster parents complete her performance of Jesus' life by torturing her, crucifying her, and burying her alive so that she might rise again in three days, although she never does.
[edit] Act III
Scene 1: Katurian, in the interrogation room with Ariel and Tupolski, is writing his confession, recounting the three child murders as well as the murders of Michal and his parents. Ariel explains his hatred for child-murders as he is preparing to torture Katurian with an electric battery. Katurian guesses that Ariel's hatred arises from a problematic childhood, and Tupolski confirms that Ariel was raped by his father, whom he later murdered (by smothering). Tupolski prevents Ariel from torturing Katurian in order to question him. Katurian is unable to answer to whether the third child victim was still alive when she was buried, leading the detectives to consider that she may still be alive. While Ariel runs out to find the girl, Tupolski tells Katurian his own story about a deaf boy saved from being hit by a train because of the unseen efforts of a Chinese wise man in a tower; Tupolski sees himself as the wise man, protecting the innocent without getting personally involved with them. Ariel then returns with the girl, who was found quite alive, having been cast by Michal not in "The Little Jesus" but in the benign tale "The Little Green Pig." The detectives question Katurian and discover that he is actually ignorant of the details of the child murders, because he was not involved. The detectives execute Katurian for murdering Michal and his parents, but also decide to burn the stories because Katurian lied in his confession. Just as Ariel is about to torch the papers, however, Katurian stands up and tells how he used his last seconds to tell himself a story about how the Pillowman came to Michal when he was young. Michal decides not to kill himself, and to suffer years of torture, so that Katurian can write his stories. This story was going to end with Ariel burning the stories, but Katurian was shot before he could finish. In fact, Ariel decides to save the stories.
[edit] Katurian's Stories
- The Little Apple Men
Told briefly in I.i, and re-enacted in the first child murder. A young girl, whose father mistreats her, carves a set of little men out of apples. She gives them to her father, telling him to save them rather than eat them. He scoffs at her, and eats several. The men have razor blades inside, which kill the father. In a twist ending, however, at night the remaining apple men accuse the girl of killing their brothers, and they jump down her throat to kill her.
- The Three Gibbet Crossroads
Told in I.i. A man wakes up in an iron gibbet, aware that he has committed the crime he is being punished for, but unaware what the crime was. He sees two other gibbets, one marked Murderer and the other marked Rapist. Several people come by who have sympathy for the murderer and the rapist, but only disgust for the first man when they read the sign declaring his crime. The man is shot by a highwayman, still unable to determine what crime he could have committed that would be worse than murder or rape.
- The Tale of the Town on the River
Told in I.i, and reenacted in the second murder. A young boy, mistreated by his parents, offers a strange dark rider a piece of his meal. Touched, the rider presents him a gift: he chops off the child's toes. The conclusion of the story relates that the rider was the Pied Piper on his way to Hamelin to take away the children. Since the boy is now crippled, he cannot keep up with the other children, and is therefore the only child in the town to survive.
- The Pillowman
Told in II.i. The Pillowman is a being made out of pillows who visits people on the verge of suicide because of the tortured lives they have led. The Pillowman travels back in time to the person's childhood and convinces them to commit suicide, thereby avoiding a life of suffering. This task saddens the Pillowman, however, and he decides to visit his own younger self, who readily commits suicide. This relieves the Pillowman's sadness, but also causes all the children he saved to live out their miserable lives and eventually die alone.
- The Little Green Pig
Told in II.i. Katurian's most juvenile story, but also the only one devoid of violence. A green pig, who enjoys his peculiar coloring, is mocked by the other pigs. The farmers use a special permanent paint to make the pig pink just like all the others. The pig prays to God to keep his peculiarity, and can't understand why God ignored his prayers. Soon after, however, a magic green rain falls that makes all the other pigs green, and since the little pig retains his pink color, he is once again "a little bit peculiar".
- The Little Jesus
Reenacted in II.ii, and originally thought to be the source for the third murder. A young girl believes that she is the second coming of Jesus, and goes about blessing unsavory characters, to the dismay of her parents and the annoyance of others. When her parents are killed in a horrific accident, she is sent to live with abusive foster parents. Annoyed with her pretensions of divinity, the foster parents complete her performance of Jesus' life by torturing her, crucifying her, and burying her alive so that she might rise again in three days, although she never does.
- The Writer and the Writer's Brother
Katurian was raised by loving parents, who encouraged him to write, and for many years he wrote very happy stories. However, at nights he began to hear sounds of torture from the next room, and as a result he began to write more disturbing stories. One night, a note is slipped under the door, claiming that Katurian's brother has been tortured nightly for seven years as part of an artistic experiment to get Katurian to become a great writer. Katurian breaks down the door, only to find his parents, who were playing a trick on him, just pretending to be torturing a child. However, when Katurian returns years later, he discovers his brother's dead body hidden under the mattress, clutching the manuscript of a beautiful story, better than any of Katurian's, which Katurian burns. Later in Act II Katurian tells Michal that in the story, the character Michal was the true "writer" of the title, whereas his own character was merely the brother.
[edit] Similarity to Closet Land
The Pillowman has many similarities to Closet Land, an earlier film written and directed by Radha Bharadwaj. In Bharadwaj's 1991 film, which she has also adapted as a stage play, a writer of children's fiction is imprisoned and tortured in an unnamed totalitarian state. The writer in Bharadwaj's work, like Katurian, initially does not know why she was arrested. She is then interrogated about whether her fanciful characters, such as the Friendly Rooster and the Cat with Green Wings, represent real-life subversives who are working to undermine the state. As with The Pillowman, Closet Land includes both narrations and reenactments of the imprisoned writer's stories. It is only during these reenactments that Closet Land ever leaves the confines of its prison setting. The interrogator at one point tries to trick the writer into believing that one of her fellow prisoners has confessed to being part of an underground dissident group, and has implicated the writer as being a member of that group. The writer is pressured to sign a confession but refuses, protesting that her stories are harmless fiction. The writer is tortured brutally during the course of Closet Land, including with an electric battery. During the course of the writer's interrogation, it is revealed that she was abused as a child and frequently hid in the closet to escape her tormentor. It was in the closet that the writer first developed her characters and stories; her imagination was her way to escape the horrors of her abuse. As she is locked in her cell, the protagonist of Closet Land is haunted by the screams and moans of her fellow prisoners who are being tortured. Closet Land ends with the writer being led to her doom.
[edit] Music
The original London and Broadway productions of the show featured music composed by Paddy Cunneen.
[edit] Notable productions
- Premiere
The play had its world premiere on November 13, 2003 at the Royal National Theatre, directed by John Crowley. The original production starred
- David Tennant - Katurian
- Jim Broadbent - Tupolski
- Nigel Lindsay - Ariel
- Adam Godley - Michal
- New York
The play opened on Broadway on April 10, 2005 at the Booth Theatre This cast starred:
- Billy Crudup - Katurian
- Jeff Goldblum - Tupolski
- Željko Ivanek - Ariel
- Michael Stuhlbarg – Michal
It concluded on September 18, 2005.
- Seoul
The play opened on May 1, 2007 at the LG art center, directed by Park, Geunhyong This cast starred:
- Choi, Minsik - Katurian
- Choi, Jongwoo - Tupolski
- Yi, Deyon - Ariel
- Yun, Zemun – Michal
[edit] Awards and nominations
- Awards
- 2004 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play
- 2005 New York Drama Critics' Circle Award for Best Foreign Play (Foreign)
- 2005 Tony Award for Best Lighting Design of a Play
- 2005 Tony Award for Best Set Design of a Play
- 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Sound Design
- Nominations
- 2004 Evening Standard Award for Best New Play
- 2005 Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Play
- 2005 Tony Award for Best Play
[edit] References
[edit] Further reading
- McDonagh, Martin (2003). The Pillowman (First edition ed.). London: Faber. ISBN 0571220320.
[edit] External links
- The Pillowman at the Internet Broadway Database
- The Insider review
- New York Times review
- Victoria Times-Colonist review
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