Reviews

The Pillowman (Norwich)

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20 October 2010

Cause and effect. It’s an age-old theme which Martin McDonagh addresses in his 2003 play The Pillowman], now revived in a new production by Daniel Burgess for the Actors Company associated with the Norwich Theatre Royal. Like most serious drama, it poses questions about the roots of evil and guilt, and about the fine line between fantasy and actuality.

We’re in a totalitarian state. Two policemen interrogate a suspect. He has a brother, towards whose physical and mental weaknesses he feels protective. But who is the real murderer, and why have these crimes been committed? It’s sparse and stark with dialogue which operates on more than one level. Burgess’ staging and the bleak setting by Henry King emphasise this.

There’s an extremely good performance by Asa Cannell as Michal, retarded and regressive. We may not want to follow him into the recesses of his mind and its imagination but he takes us there, like it or not. James Scales is Katurian, a triple-initialled K with undertones of Kafka’s creation, and makes this writer of weird stories something more than just everyone else’s experiment.

John O’Mahony plays Tupolski, the senior interrogator with Jamie Bower as his less cerebral junior, a man who hates being in second place. Katie Wilkinson and Ali Hunt are the two children who are so integral a part of the story, both in its nightmare past and in its equally terrible present. Will there, can there be a future?