Summary
WARNING: parts of this play describing child torture and murder and offering scenes of parents abusing a child and on-stage smotherings are deeply disturbing.
I have no doubt that Anglo-Irish writer Martin McDonagh has all the correct credentials and ticks every box as far as this Olivier Award winning work from The National Theatre is concerned. I still came away with the image of the creator gleefully hacking away at the bottom of Pandora's box. McDonagh's work has been described as Grimm's Fairytales for grownups with a distinct touch of Pinter and Orton. Well it's a lot Grimmer than that. He invents a police state where officers Tupolski (Jim Norton) and Ariel (Ewan Stewart) are unfettered in their pursuit of a triple child-killer. Their target is Katurian (Lee Ingleby), the creator of 400 macabre short stories mostly concerning young death, and his disabled brother Michael (Edward Hogg). Not only do we have to endure Michael being dismissed as a spastic, but Katurian's howls of innocence are silenced when his brother admits he was researching the validity of the teethgritting stories.See the full content of this document
Extract
The Pillowman, Newcastle Theatre Royal
The fact that most of...
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