The Pillowman

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The Pillowman
Written by Martin McDonagh
Characters Katurian
Tupolski
Ariel
Michal
Date of premiere November 13, 2003
Place of premiere Royal National Theatre, London
Original language English
Genre Black comedy
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The Pillowman is a 2003 play by Martin McDonagh. An especially dark 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.

Contents

[edit] Plot Introduction

Katurian, a writer of grisly short stories often depicting violence against children, has been arrested by two detectives, Ariel and Tupolski, because some of his stories resemble recent child murders. On learning 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 older 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.

[edit] Plot

[edit] Act 1

  • 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 conveying political messages against the totalitarian dictatorship through his stories. The three discuss Katurian's grisly stories involving children. Ariel leaves the room, and soon after Michal is heard screaming in the next room. Ariel returns, his hand bloodied 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: Katurian, along with the mother and father, acts out the autobiographical story "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. 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.

[edit] Act 2

  • 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 of "The Writer and the Writer's Brother," and resented the alterations 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: Katurian and others act out the story of "The Little Jesus."

[edit] Act 3

  • 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 problem 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 envisions 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, the dead 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, and as a result Ariel decides to save the stories.

[edit] Katurian's Stories

[edit] The Little Apple Men

Told briefly in I.i, and reenacted 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.

[edit] The Three Gibbet Crossroads

A Kafkaesque tale 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.

[edit] 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.

[edit] 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 lead. The Pillowman travels back 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 had "saved" to live out their miserable lives and eventually die alone.

[edit] 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" (66).

[edit] The Little Jesus

Reenacted in II.ii, and mistakenly 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] Allusions

Katurian's situation in the interrogation room, along with his name, alludes to Josef K of Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. "The Three Gibbet Crossroad" is also inspired by Kafka's short stories, with Katurian referring to it as "something-esque," a play on the term "Kafkaesque."

[edit] Production History and Awards

The play had its world premiere on November 13, 2003 at the Royal National Theatre, directed by John Crowley. The original production starred:

It received the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play and was nominated for the Evening Standard Award for Best New Play.

The Pillowman opened on Broadway on April 10, 2005 at the Booth Theatre. The cast consisted of:

The play concluded its Broadway run on September 18, 2005.

The production won:

[edit] External links


v • d • e
Works by Martin McDonagh
The Leenane Trilogy
The Beauty Queen of Leenane · A Skull in Connemara · The Lonesome West
The Aran Islands Trilogy
The Cripple of Inishmaan · The Lieutenant of Inishmore · The Banshees of Inisheer
Other Plays
The Pillowman
Films