The
Pillowman, as its deliberately misleading blurb would have it,
charts storyteller Katurian's harrowing experience with the police
of an unknown totalitarian state after the latter imprisons and interrogates
him about his terrifying short stories. Established in a vaguely sadomasochistic
setting and laced with political innuendo, the initial scenes lead us
- "us" referring especially to seasoned theatregoers,
academics, critics or anyone else inclined to detect reams of subtexts
and hidden meanings - to believe that it is a wicked little satire
on police brutality and Big Brotherism.
In Martin McDonagh's unsettling and exhilarating psychological
thriller, there are touches of slapstick and farce, shades of Dostoyevsky,
Kafka, Beckett and Scheherazade. One could also argue that it is a subtle
examination of political fear, the sources and effects of fiction, or
an artist's relationship with his work. However, such deconstruction
fails to grasp McDonagh's towering vision. In fact, he seizes on and
mocks such analysis. As the play's dizzying series of tales and
lies unfolds, perspectives keep shifting and blurring: in one scene,
The Pillowman is the blackest of all comedies; in the next,
the most cheerful of any tragedy. It is, as Katurian exasperatedly proclaims,
"a puzzle with no solution". What becomes clear -
perhaps the only thing clear - is that McDonagh concerns himself
only with the story he is telling, not what it could mean, signify or
allude to. Like Katurian, he's not "saying anything at all"
- and why should he? A story's power to amuse, frighten and enchant
is already all-consuming and absorbing in itself, and McDonagh's
ability to weave these possibilities into a coherent dramatic frame
is a testament to his will and skill.
Comedy in The Pillowman also makes you vulnerable to its horror;
in turn, the shock and revulsion such horror provokes sets up the next
macabre joke and surefire laugh. Ensuring that one scene does not anticipate,
and hence betray another, Tracie Pang's finely calibrated direction
captures and sustains the rollercoaster extremes of McDonagh's
work, eliciting smiles that split into gasps, and laughter that abruptly
stops in its tracks. She understands that in a good story, one should
never be able to tell what will happen next.
Pang's meticulousness also blurs the lines between reality and fiction,
immersing you thoroughly in McDonagh's dark and twisted world. Call
me gullible, but the gunshot in the closing sequence was deafening and
frighteningly lifelike: suspension of disbelief or not, I wondered momentarily
if Adrian Pang's Tupolski was wielding a real gun. Blood oozing from
the still figure of Katurian after he was shot only reaffirmed that.
Pang also pulls off some tricky sleights of hand in the torture scenes:
Katurian bears the swollen lip and bruises of the heavy blows immediately
after they are leveled on him. One of the most chilling moments in the
play comes when Ariel plunks a heavy set of electrodes beside Katurian,
cackling sadistically as he closes the circuit to send electric sparks
flying in all directions. A woman dressed in a shawl and cocktail dress
in front of me abruptly leaned forward and clutched her knees in a foetal
and rather unglamorous posture, shock, anxiety then weariness registering
on her face.
Narrative art is the blood and spirit of the production: at the evening's
end, everyone is branded as a storyteller of sorts. Daniel Jenkins'
Katurian is as much a master of storytelling as he is mastered by it.
During the interrogation, Katurian is fraught with the nervous energy
of someone thrashing about in an emotional no-man's land. When he tells
stories, the hunted look in his eyes disappears; his face is flushed
with the ecstasy and vitality of someone who inhabits the world of fantasy
he creates. This remarkable change is also reflected in his surroundings:
the harsh lighting of the interrogation room fades into a soft glow
trained on Katurian, which radiates as much from him as it does from
the lights. Good-cop bad-cop duo Tupolski and Ariel also tell anecdotes
of their "problem childhoods" with a clumsy, childlike eagerness, enraptured
by storytelling but unable to transform their stories into art. Truth
is specious in this morbidly fascinating world of fiction. "I kind of
hate any writing that's vaguely autobiographical," Katurian says, "I
think people who only write about what they know only write about what
they know because they're too fucking stupid to make anything up."
The cast realizes McDonagh and Pang's creative vision with some of
the finest performances I have seen in theatre. Daniel Jenkins' Katurian
is a picture of intense pain and incommunicable passion. Michael Corbidge
burrows deep into the character with his usual discipline, turning in
a carefully measured, stunning portrayal of Katurian's brother, Michal.
If you think his performance is just a set of tics and mannerisms -
repeated phrases and compulsive hand gestures - you need only look into
the actor's eyes to see how deeply he is committed to perceiving the
world the way Michal does. The brotherly love that Jenkins and Corbidge's
characters exude also locates an almost redemptive sense of poignancy
and earnestness in the bleak, morally topsy-turvy world they inhabit.
As police officer Tupolski, Adrian Pang infuses the production with
a louche vitality, his barely suppressed chuckle and terrifyingly quiet
voice lending a gentle, murderous touch to the good-cop bad-cop mind
game he plays with Katurian. Throughout the evening he reminds Katurian
that he is the "good cop", yet consistently provokes simple-minded
"bad cop" Ariel to assault him, and coolly executes Katurian
"seven and three-quarter seconds" after the latter puts
his hood on despite promising him a full "ten seconds".
Even Susan Tordoff and Andy Tear, who play comparatively minor roles,
are riveting in their chillingly precise mimes of a variety of abusive
and psychotic parental figures. However, as "bad cop" Ariel, Shane Mardjuki
seems uncomfortable in his own skin for most of the first act, his movement
on stage too studied as he paces around the stage fumbling with his
cigarette case. You can almost see him thinking, "I am acting nervous
now" or "I shall look agitated now". Oddly enough, in the second act,
he finally understands McDonagh's language and relaxes into it, impressively
conveying the sadistic yet tortured demeanour of Ariel.
The unsettling power of The Pillowman lies in McDonagh's
subversion of sentimental consolations, and almost gleeful willingness
to push the dreadful implications of any story to their blackest conclusions.
It is a fable about a world that is a fable - what you see and
hear is infernal and dark as a grave, except that you might just as
well call it heavenly.
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"The unsettling power of The Pillowman lies in McDonagh's
subversion of sentimental consolations, and almost gleeful willingness
to push the dreadful implications of any story to their blackest conclusions."
Credits
Playwright: Martin McDonagh
Director: Tracie Pang
Production Designer: wu + brown
Lighting Designer: Suven Chan
Sound Designer: Darren Ng
Multimedia Designer: Alien, Flaky & Friends Animation Studios
Cast: Daniel Jenkins, Adrian Pang, Shane Mardjuki, Susan Tordoff, Andy
Tear, Alecia Chua and Michael Corbidge
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