Wilma's "The Pillowman' (second review)

Beyond Kafka: The power of words

DAN ROTTENBERG

The rich may instinctively exercise power through money or guns, but people who lack these coercive tools often survive through the power of words. Humor, story-telling, philosophy, imagination, fantasy— these markets have always been cornered by underdogs (think: blacks, Jews, Irish, gays, women). And at the end of the day, who really wields greater power— the armed rich, or the wordsmiths? As Martin Luther put it five centuries ago: “Riches are the least worthy gifts which God can give men. Therefore, God commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else.” Or as Walter Lippman put it within the past century: “Ultimately, government is merely organized opinion.”

Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman provides an intriguing and disturbing examination of these themes. In a brutal and repressive police state, the writer Katurian expresses himself by creating gruesome and perverted short stories about parents who kill their children and vice versa. He runs afoul of the police, who are investigating a series of murders that mirror the killings described in Katurian’s stories. Are the stories autobiographical accounts of murders that Katurian actually committed? Did his stories encourage someone else to commit those murders? Is it all merely a coincidence? Or did the police just dream up the murders out of their own imaginations, as an excuse to torture a nonconformist?

The Zizkas: Refugees from Orwell

At the opening curtain— Katurian sitting blindfolded in a police torture chamber— we seem to be venturing into the familiar territory of Kafka’s The Trial or Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, a land staked out so well (if so repeatedly) over the past 30 years by those refugees from Orwellian Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe, Jiri and Blanka Zizka of the Wilma Theater. But it quickly develops that this is no predictably Kafkaesque tale of a repressive state destroying an innocent individual. The two cops in The Pillowman may be brutal, but Katurian’s words possess a brutality all their own; and while it may be easy for the cops to twist Katurian’s arm or electrify his genitals, they can’t lay a finger on his words. (It further develops that Katurian writes about murder and mayhem for the same reason that his primary tormentor— the “bad cop” Ariel— practices murder and mayhem: Both men were abused as children.)

The overriding question of the play’s first act is: Will the cops destroy Katurian? In the second act, it’s: Will the cops destroy his words? The latter proves far more difficult than the former.

Laughing when I shouldn't

This provocative work offers ample food for thought, and McDonagh’s genius here lies in his ability to render profound and heavy issues entertaining and even funny. (Why did I find myself laughing out loud at lines that should have revolted me?) McDonagh’s original takes on the good-cop-bad-cop syndrome will break refreshing new ground for “Law and Order” junkies like me, and his dialogue is enhanced by the performances of Lewis J. Stadlen (as Topolski, the “good” cop) and Michael Pemberton (as the intimidating “bad cop” Ariel). Director Jiri Zizka astutely complements McDonagh’s script with enough to occupy the eye visually, rescuing what might otherwise have become an evening consisting of nothing but stimulating talk. Ultimately The Pillowman is a dramatic tribute to the mantra of the late self-styled “Underground Grammarian,” Richard Mitchell of Rowan University: “After you die and your body has disintegrated, your words will be all that’s left of you. Choose them carefully.”


For another review by Lewis Whittington, click here.
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