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NZ Review
27 August 2007
Review: A Storyteller's Story
Reviewed by Nik Smythe
The action takes place in the interrogation rooms of a police precinct in an undisclosed totalitarian urban centre, where a criminal can be caught, tried and executed all in a day... Mega City One perhaps? John Verryt's greyscale set is appropriately minimal, the main back wall dressing resembling a horizontal crucifix, though not as much as it does a big white present wrapped in a black ribbon.
The main character Katurian, played with genuine humanity by Craig Parker, is in custody for reasons he is yet to be informed about. His misanthropic custodians Ariel, a seethingly volatile Michael Hurst, and Detective Tupolski, a glib and bureaucratic Jonathan Hardy, make it clear to Katurian that he's in trouble and going to suffer. But rather than explain why, they proceed to violently question him on the nature of the twisted and often brutal stories he writes.
Katurian is cooperative, lucid and logical, but stripped of his rights and on the back foot for lack of knowing what he's even doing here. As the clues in what plays out in the first scene as a classic detective mystery are revealed, and the sense of what's happening and why slowly forms, the play becomes a philosophical discussion about the implied moral responsibility of authors.
Actually, it's one of those plays with so many layers and twists that it's best to just watch it. The script is remarkably engaging considering it's often didactic and repetitive, as indeed are police inquiries for reasons of legal clarity. Unfortunately a few fluffed lines and a badly timed gunshot sound effect did break the otherwise powerful atmospheric spell a few times. However it's evident that Simon Prast, ATC founder and The Pillowman's guest director to mark the company's 15th birthday, is in his element with this neo-gothic psychological thriller, which he has expertly composed and presented to a warmly responsive opening night audience.
Both Parker and Gareth Reeves, as his mildly retarded (for reasons revealed in time) older brother Michael, have a palpable human quality that makes for enthralling theatre. Reeves' matter-of-fact childish naivety is so endearing that when his more sinister nature becomes apparent, delivered with exactly the same simplistic honesty, it's all the more heartbreaking.
Hardy's Tupolski is a darkly triumphant tour-de-force. Initially quite grandfatherly, we see him wear his authoritarian position with a kind of cavalier disdain. Hurst's Ariel is all fists and fury to start with; not too much of a stretch for the actor. The morally driven white collar everyman beneath his angry fascist exterior comes through in the third act, creating a duality which Hurst appears to struggle with a little, in maintaining the character's cohesion.
In cameo roles as characters in Katurian's grimly fanciful tales, Oliver Driver and Bonnie Soper bring a deceptive absurdity as various parental characters, all of whom are ultimately evil, scheming sadists. Meanwhile Brooke Williams' brilliantly realised little girl roles are worthy of cult classic status, in particular the demonically divine 'Little Jesus'.
Verryt's bureau-gothic set is enhanced with skillful subtlety by Bryan Caldwell's lights. And I was impressed by the instant hush in the auditorium when the house lights snap to black to signal the beginning of each half. Eden Mulholland's sound design is for the most part unobtrusive, apart from the swelling melodramatic orchestral piece that accompanies the second act's climax. Elizabeth Whiting's costumes are similarly perfect enough so as not to distract us by seeming out of place.
The programme's written bio on the playwright informs us that playwright McDonagh dislikes theatre and originally only wrote plays with the intention of advancing to screenplays. With all his works based on a series of stories originally written inside a year in the mid 90s, The Pillowman was the first of these but the most recently rewritten. The literary protagonist and the conceptual anti-ideology suggest something autobiographical in the essence of this storyteller's story.
The idea that sticks with me most is that perhaps stories are as inevitable and essential to the fabric of reality as life itself, and our predestined purpose as crude carbon based life forms is to ensure the stories are told. Katurian's stories, like any great story, seem larger than the author who invented them, as though he's really just channelling the story into our world from it's home dimension. | | |