Theatre Review (Queens, NY): The Pillowman at the Astoria Performing Arts Center

When Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman opened in the spring of 1995, I was its biggest advocate. I thought the balance of black, black humor and serious discussion of the consequences of art was extraordinary. I was too big a fan perhaps. It may have been ill-advised of me to insist to Brían O'Bryne, at that time starring in Doubt, how The Pillowman should win a Tony for Best New Drama. Doubt won that Tony.

The Astoria Performing Arts Center features The Pillowman as its first mainstage production this 2009-10 season. It is a daring beginning. The Pillowman is a difficult play and couldn't be further from some of APAC's previous productions, Ragtime for example. The stark contrast is intentional, said both executive director Taryn Drongowski and artistic director Tom Wojtunik. In their opinions, a divisive play, like The Pillowman, is necessary for the growth of the young theatre company.

Just how fractious a play is The Pillowman? When it first appeared on the British stage, one reviewer wrote that it was "a hopelessly disorganized play in which the action keeps grinding to a halt so the main character can read out one of a half dozen or so interminable short stories. It felt less like an evening at the theatre than being trapped in a Creative Writing Workshop." That critic left during intermission.

Here in New York City, our own Clive Barnes wrote in the New York Post: "who said that child torture, murder and mutilation can't be funny?" Mr. Barnes obviously liked the play.

It may be hard to imagine how child torture, murder and mutilation can be funny, but in Martin McDonagh's world, it is. McDonagh, famously Anglo-Irish, usually sets his play in statistically overly murderous rural Irish towns. The Pillowman is his only drama set outside of Ireland. The distance improves the drama.

The setting is a nameless, rather timeless, vaguely Eastern European totalitarian state. The action is storytelling – storytelling in both its sense, as narrative and as misrepresentation. Stories loop continuously throughout the familiar bad cop/good cop interview room scenario.

Article Author: Kate Shea Kennon

A freelance culture and tastes writer, look for me in the last row mezzanine, obsessing on good theatre, television, and mixology, always looking for mad skills on stage and behind the stick. Contributor to Westchester Magazine, Gannett newspapers, …

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