Theatre review: The Pillowman

Not only do the shows cancelled for the 2020 lockdown keep coming back to life, it does seem like that lost year of theatre had an extraordinary amount of shows I'd been particularly looking forward to: Like The Pillowman, the 2003 play widely regarded as Martin McDonagh's best, but which I hadn't seen yet. Originally slated to star Tom Sturridge, I did wonder if it was a coincidence that the production's rescheduling was announced shortly after The Sandman's renewal, as if they'd been waiting to see if Sturridge could still make it, or if they should go in a different direction. Quite a different direction at it turns out: Lily Allen's casting is apparently the first time the lead character of Katurian has been reimagined as a woman. Katurian and her brother Michal (Matthew Tennyson) led a childhood of cruel and unusual abuse by their parents, whom she eventually murdered.

Michal has been most obviously mentally scarred, and presents as a creepily childlike adult with learning disabilities, who just wants his sister to tell him stories.

It's in these stories that the effect on Katurian herself is seen: She's written hundreds of short stories, almost all of which feature children being abused and often horrifically murdered. Now she's been brought into a police interview room to answer questions on a series of real-life child killings that mirror the ones she invented. But only one of her stories was ever published, so the only people who could possibly have been inspired to recreate them are herself and her brother, who's also in the building, and can sometimes be heard screaming.

If there wasn't already enough going on the play is set in what cheerfully describes itself as a totalitarian dictatorship, so as well as the gory crimes themselves there's also the sense that being able to pin something on someone who has the audacity to tell stories - that may or may not have a deeper allegorical meaning - is a win in itself. Meanwhile it gradually becomes apparent that for Katurian, the immortality of having her writing live on is more important than her own or her brother's lives.

It's hard to imagine you'd ever need to use the phrase "that's a bit dark for Martin McDonagh" but The Pillowman lives up to its billing as his masterpiece. There's the familiar streak of incredibly dark but hilarious comedy, with severed body parts and carefully placed racist and ableist remarks turning up for shock value - and I don't want to underplay how funny the evening is. But I don't think I've seen him use shock comedy to such devastating effect before.

One of the things that makes The Pillowman so engrossing is the way it's a nest of multiple stories: As well as the interrogation and the twists and turns we meet along the way, there's the incriminating short stories themselves. Equal parts horrific and entertaining, there's a real sense of the dark roots of fairytales in their explorations of abused children and the ripple effect on themselves and the world around them in later life - if, of course, Katurian's children get to live a later life. The titular story of a gentle monster with an extreme solution for adults who grew up through abuse is a breathtakingly nihilistic tale, and Phill was pretty sure he'd have nightmares (if it wasn't too hot to sleep.)

The stories are kept fresh through a mix of having a character read them, having them summarised or having them acted out in upstage dumbshows, Anna Fleischle's set and Neil Austin's lighting taking us from stark interview room to dark storybook and back. In fact the only weak link in Matthew Dunster's production is Allen herself. Dunster previously worked with her as the first in a now-infamous stream of random women with big Instagram followings in 2:22 A Ghost Story, but that wasn't as big a stretch for the singer-turned-actress.

In fact at first there's nothing wrong with the understated, painfully normal-seeming young woman Allen gives us, an eager-to-please everywoman in a far from everyday world. But as the story gives us layers to both that world and Katurian's history and place in it, there's not much change in her performance to go with it and explore those layers. By contrast the rest of the cast is full of comparative veterans: Tennyson is in his element, in the sense that the role is actually meant to be creepy.

Steve Pemberton as designated good cop Tupolski and Paul Kaye as designated Bad Cop Ariel, meanwhile, quickly twist and complicate those simple distinctions. Kaye has made a career of playing grotesques, and knows how to inject them with unexpected nuance. Tupolski is Katurian's slickly unpredictable antagonist, and Pemberton has the standout delivery of the night with a pitch-black comic line about people blaming their childhoods for how their adult lives turned out.

Ultimately the idea to take this almost entirely male world and put a woman in the role of the person being attacked by it is an interesting one, it's just a shame the woman is question is an actress whose limitations and inexperience show up a bit too clearly in this play and this company. For me it's nowhere near enough to derail The Pillowman's effect, and this remains another night at the theatre that'll be hard to forget in a hurry - whether as a dream of a show or in nightmares, time will tell.

The Pillowman by Martin McDonagh is booking until the 2nd of September at the Duke of York's Theatre.

Running time: 2 hours 40 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Johan Persson.