The Pillowman: Martin McDonagh done camp? Yes!
A kid in a Jesus beard gets swatted across the room in slow motion.
Gate Theatre, Dublin
★★★★☆
“It was the children he was after in the first place,” says a writer, giving a new interpretation of a classic fairy tale in the Gate Theatre’s excellent dark comedy The Pillowman. Famously, the Pied Piper of Hamelin turned his bewitching instrument on a town’s children when locals refused to thank him for ridding their rat infestation. A new rewrite imagines a more disturbing truth: what if the vermin were a smokescreen? What if he always intended to kidnap the kids but wanted to leave a community agonising over their decisions forever?
Such is the imagination of Katurian – a passionate short story writer, played by Fra Fee – that his fiction’s blend of Grimm darkness and imaginative torture has drawn the attention of authorities. We first meet him inside an interrogation room, navigating leading questions by two police officers. “Why do you suspect we have brought you here?” asks Tupolski. “Look, why don’t we just start torturing him?” suggests Ariel.