theatre #1

THE PILLOWMAN

June 22, 2005

ACT I- Scene 1

Jeff Goldblum reminds me of Ben's dad, so much. Billy Crudup- really overacting in this first passage, as the hood comes off, but maybe that's fair in this circumstance. Muted palette, all grays and blacks. Odd language- 'of what to what OR of what to what?' Serious tone, silly, silly dialogue… "my only duty is to tell a story"… clearly there's a terror in upsetting state power, he's frantically concerned about political material getting into his story- desperate to make clear that it is coincidental, never intentional.

Katurian Katurian- a Humbert Humbert reference? Children getting beat up by bad Dads- quite possibly a political message, to my ears, but Katurian doesn't want to claim it as such. A terrifying act of violence- Ariel throws Katurian to the ground, stabs him in the ear- nobody's laughing now. "I don't know what you want me to say"- reminds me of the stories I've read of Soviet interrogations.

His brother, Michal, is in there- the chamber next door. This angers Katurian. Man, Goldblum- funny, in control, scary. "I don't have themes! I'm not trying to say anything at all, that's my whole thing!" I love the passages of Jeff and Billy… I really like the Two Gibbets story. Haunting. The challenge of 'is there a solution'…

I'm excited to hear his 'best story' as he reads it… Creepy hearing the audience laugh along with the tyrannical bullying of the Detective. "we'll execute you at the end," delivered with smug callousness, is a triumphant laugh line. The story basically sounds like generosity betrayed, a tale of callousness- Oh! It's the Pied Piper. He crippled the child so that he'd survive the spell. "He brought the rats, it's the children he was after." What a compelling line. It's a powerful political allegory, the tyrants that engineer their own fear.

Ariel reminds me of Ryumin. The haunting scream across the hall. The "I hurt my hand" balanced against the torture. Katurian and Ariel screaming- oh man. Ariel has this tendency to the effete shriek. Katurian toughens up- "I believe you're trying to frame us. Because you don't like the kind of stories I write. And you don't like retards cluttering your streets."

Scene 2

Katurian's telling another story now. Shown on a screen. The creative child whose stories get darker and darker- his parents were torturing his brother in the other room. The note- "they have loved you and tortured me for seven straight years as an artistic experiment"- obviously false, the kid wouldn'tve known how to write- whoa! Fucked up! His parents wrote the note! and… oh shit! The corpse of the boy! And the story- 'it was better than anything he'd ever written.' And he burned the story… and the story was true- but that ending was false. He saw his brother, brain damaged- he killed his parents, the pillow held over both of them… haunting. An Insane story. Horrifying. Haunting. Man.

Scene 3

Now we go to the brother's cell. Now we hear Katurian's offstage screams. Now we hear the brother telling a story, the Little Green Pig.

I'm not buying the brother so far- he seems too positive… unless it's that his torture made him understand that he deserves any sort of cruelty. The brother, though retarded, seems decently emotionally adjusted- makes me think that horrifying story is Katurian's creation… don't believe everything you read- seems to be an essential lesson in this moment. We don't know if this is true at all. We don't even know if the children are killed. And it comes out- they didn't torture the brother. The brother, Michal, did whatever they wanted.

The moment of love- the quiet hug.

Michal asks to hear 'The Pillowman.' I'm expecting the nightmarish tale of the previous scene- but it's a nine foot tall man made of pillows. His job is to help men and women who have led terrible lives, and want to kill themselves- he brings them back to their childhood, before the moment of devastating trauma, and convinces them to kill themselves then- and make it all seem like an accident. It is sad, painful work. In his last job ever, he visits himself as a child- and he burns himself alive. The last thing he ever hears is the screams of the hundreds of thousands of people he had helped- who would now lose that help, and live out the agony of their lives as it had always unfolded.

Oh shit- the brother says he had hid the box of toes. OH SHIT- THE BROTHER KILLED THOSE THREE KIDS. "Woudlnt've thought there'd be that much blood in a little body"- THE BROTHER DID IT- FUCK. "Because you told me to!" "I was just testing your stories." "We'll never know will we, because you never did." (write happy stories)… "They're gonna destroy everything now." And now it comes out that the central story is True, "you're just like Mom and Dad." (*There's a pillow in this room… Czekhov's gun?)

"I killed her like the Little Jesus"- and Katurian is weeping. It must've been a truly horrific way to kill someone. "I used to love you so much," Katurian says, weeping. "The Writer and The Writer's Brother"- Michal's read it. (It's about what you leave behind. They're not gonna kill my stories. They're all I've got.) He should've killed his brother when he was a child- the moral of the Pillowman. YOU CAME IN FOURTH IN THE DISCUS! OUT OF FUCKING FOUR!

The Little Green Pig. The pillow getting closer… "It could never be washed off, it could never be painted over." A Green Rain- never could be washed off. Never could be painted over. Every single one of them was green- and now there was just the Little Pink Pig.

And after that story- as his brother is sleeping… the Pillowman. A startlingly long sequence. Katurian sobs on the floor. And calls for the guards- "I have a confession to make, on one condition! It involves my stories!"

My goodness- they fit an absolute full play's worth of drama and discovery in that first act.

ACT II- Scene 1

Opens with the story of the Little Jesus, acted out as before. She wore a beard. She was spunky. Cute, silly start to this story. The dark, dark turns… the sound of the hammer hitting the nail… is horrifying. "No, I don't wanna be like Jesus. I fucking Am Jesus." And she's buried alive. (so many laughs in this show hit at unsettling, confusing places. After the girl is crucified and the parents leave to watch TV- laughter. Did McDonagh even mean it as such? Such an eerie moment.)

Scene 2

And back to the detectives. The plea is to release his stories fifty years after his death. I'm surprised to see Ariel rather shaken up here. He's become frail and empathetic rather suddenly. (or maybe there were hints earlier- the fact that he was nice to Michal.) Now he says he has "an overwhelming hatred for people like you"… "I carry it with me on the bus"… and he Knows he uses excessive force. He wants to protect little kids. It seems obsessively important to him. This is his moment of emotional breakthrough, the character's confession, his opening up. "I stand on the Right side." He's a psychotic man with searing moral clarity. And Goldblum strolls in and dismisses it all with one mocking line.

Ariel had a pretty shitty childhood, too. Goldblum doesn't accept it as an excuse for today's cruelty. "My Dad was a violent alcoholic. Am I a violent alcoholic?" long pause. "Yeah I am." Biggest laugh of the night.

Oh boy- Ariel killed his own Dad, too. His Dad was a rapist. Killed him with a pillow. Goldblum has such a great presence. Funny, sardonic, total authority. "Ariel's a policeman, dogs can police; I'm a Detective." Love this line.

Now Goldblum tells his story; he's kinda making it up as he goes along. The old man sees "this retarded little Chinese deaf boy…" "How did he know the little boy was deaf?" Great challenge. A pause. "He saw his hearing aid." Another huge hit. And the old wise man doesn't help, but he throws his paper airplane out the window, with the essential calculations written on it- and the little boy dodges the tracks to catch the plane. It's cool as an accident- as Katurian sees it, and me- but Goldblum meant it as a deliberate action.

The Pillowman- that's a story that Goldblum liked. That it was the child's choice, sometimes.… the Detective's son drowned. Fishing, on his own. All these characters have a pat moment from their past that justifies it all. Not Sure I love that, but maybe that's just theatre. They use the whole buffalo. There are no untidy coincidences.

*She was still alive. The girl is here. Painted green. With piglets. The first thing on stage that's really broken the palette. What a crazy development (and she's unique…) and now Ariel cracks it. Katurian didn't kill the children. Doesn't even know the Jewish boy's hair color.

Fascinating thing happening here- I find myslef more tense, more scared, more uncertain, for what will happen to the stories than what'll happen to Katurian.

"I'm sorry. I'm really sorry. And I've never said that to anybody in custody." The fire has started…

I was a good writer. It's all I ever wanted to be. And I was.

Katurian Katurian tried to think up a final story, or a footnote… The Pillowman visits Michal. AndMichael says he'd rather live, and be tortured, and let the stories exist. And then he grows up, and all the evil happens, and he dies, and the stories are burned anyway. But that dark ending was coming in the final 3 1/2 seconds- cut short by Goldblum's bullet. And as it turned out, that pessimistic ending was untrue. Ariel saves the stories…

Good ending.

This is absolutely a story that a writer writes- a story where keeping the stories alive is the most precious act. The creations are the children saved, the most precious children. It's an excellent piece of theatre, altogether.

Sometimes the character turns- particularly Ariel- are unconvincingly quick. Sometimes the justifications are too simple. And I'm still confused by how the Little Jesus and the Little Green Pig got mixed up. But there's a ton The Pillowman gets right- it's a powerful story of malleable facts; it's a searing political allegory in moments. It plays with dark comedy, and whenever you think you've allowed yourself to laugh at the darkness, it goes darker and crueler, and shames you, shakes you.

It's an interesting balance of moral visions- the dismissive, distant protector; the passionate rage, both heroic and hideous as the bullets fire; the poet, passively examining the dark side through art (maybe rewrite that part later); and the naked, amoral naivete of the tortured, brain damaged manchild- but not lacking in kindness and a tragic curiosity.

The moral argument in the very last minute- that Michal choosing his torture, so that the stories will exist, is somehow a redeeming moment rather than a grotesque tragedy- is creepy. And the laughter as I've said comes in dark and uncomfortable places, it almost makes you doubt the moral validity of the audience.

The stories are excellent. Art within art can often fail to live up to expectations, but Katurian's stories are dark, thoughtful, thought provoking, and they keep with you. They're very good. Well produced, well conceived, excellently cast; I was more drawn in than I thought I could be, sitting at that monitor. This one was a real winner.