Four
characters in a police station, and four actors portraying imagined or
remembered scenes from stories and memories thickly populate the stage of the
Downstairs Theatre at Steppenwolf in Martin McDonagh's "The Pillowman". Prepare to react strongly
to the substance and the sequence of images. As directed by ensemble Amy
Morton,
"The Pillowman" provokes and incites and moves deeply.
Tupolski
(Tracy Letts)
and Ariel (Yasen Peyankov) are a good cop - bad cop team in a police station in an
unnamed repressive police state. All the action takes place in their offices at
the station and on a stage on which are enacted a series of "memory
plays". The object (or target) of their attention is Katarian (Jim
True-Frost), a
writer ("I just write stories, that's all I do"), a number of whose
stories depicting horrors inflicted on children have been mimicked in child
homicides. The investigation of these murders expands to Ariel's brother Michal
(Michael Shannon)
whose mental incapacities may have been caused by abuse suffered as a child,
and who may or may not have caused some suffering of his own.
The
writing is limpid and spare. The scenic design by Loy Arcenas is masterfully evocative -- part
Orwell's "1984", part rusted socialist official's lair, and part a
stage set of the imagination on which stories as read by the police officials
or narrated by Katarian or remember by his brother Michal are enacted for us.
The
writer Katarian notes at one point that "there are no happy endings in
real life". Somehow this masterful piece, through its misery, conveys hope
and proves this statement wrong. The happy ending is to come, through the power
of dreams and the power of the creative process, despite the fears engendered
by that process, perhaps especially in a police state. And in fact, this play
illustrates that empathy may be found in the most surprising places.
And
in the end, all we have are the words and the performances. If you are up to
the possibilities inherent in an unchecked police state, if you have pondered
the role of the artist in society ("we like executing writers",
Tupolski says at one point, "it sends a signal"), and if you are open
to the full range of possible types of family dysfunction, this is a production
full of performances and images that are not to be missed.