Theater review: The Pillowman

by Arnold Wayne Jones of Dallas Voice

In psychological terms, Freud might have described the contemporary Irish playwright Martin McDonagh as one sick fuck. Over a half-dozen plays and two movie scripts, McDonagh has devised some of the most gruesome plots this side of Clive Barker. Among the story points roiling around inside that moist tomb that is his mind: matricide via boiling lard; the onstage execution of a cat by pistol (oh, and the slow torture of a prisoner, too); an exploding cow; and a gravedigger hired to pulpify the bones of the recently interred.

How does this man sleep at night? (I’m guessing on a pile of money.)

To make matters worse, as darkly and profoundly disturbing as his plays are, they are also unrelentingly funny — and not just in that tentative, gallows-humor way. I mean roll-in-the-aisles hysterical. Imagine Monty Python with a chainsaw.

The Pillowman, which is enjoying its Dallas premiere thanks to Kitchen Dog Theater, may be the apotheosis of McDonagh’s storytelling ethos, mainly because its central character is a storyteller as twisted as McDonagh himself.

Katurian K. Katurian (Lee Trull) — his parents also had a love for twisted jokes — is an unsuccessful writer in a nameless totalitarian state. He’s written more than 400 short stories that put the “grim” into Grimm Fairy Tales: An ironic deconstruction of “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” where the piper is a pedophile; a religious allegory where a girl is buried alive; a story of a gentle giant tasked with convincing people to commit suicide. And virtually all involve children.

This theme has attracted the attention of the local constabulary, especially good cop Tupolski (Ian Leson) and bad cop Ariel (Michael Federico), who notice a disturbing similarity between Katurian’s plots and a series of child murders. Before you can say “Patriot Act,” Katurian and his mentally retarded adult brother, Michal (Cameron Cobb) are being interrogated — a formality before the execution, since the police know the author is guilty. They just want him to confess first.

With The Pillowman, McDonagh turns the nightmarish outline of Kafka’s The Trial into a work of hilarious madness. His “Mr. K” doesn’t even get a trial, and the incomprehensibility of his ordeal is eerily frightening. Trull, who has a knack for seeming both innocent and sniveling, does top-notch work. Katurian has cared for his brother his entire life, and his stories have become talismans, expressions of his love for Michal. Trull embraces his characters conflicts and passions superbly.

Even better is Cobb, uncannily convincing as a mentally retarded man. His Michal is, as it must be, sweet, disarming but also infuriating. As the thought policeman, Leson has just the right voice: soothing one second, then horrible. Few actors seem as organic onstage as Leson: listening, reacting, seeming to conjure up dialogue from thin air with sarcastic wit.

At nearly two-and-a-half hours, The Pillowman could feel unrelenting. But so electric is this production, co-directed by Jonathan Taylor and Christina Vela, the time flies by. Even the oppressive set, like the inside of a submarine, is institutional, cold and colorless — a crucible in which Katurian’s goose is cooked — doesn’t overwhelm your enjoyment.

Enjoy a play about incest, child rape and Abu Ghraib-like torture? Well, yes. How sick does than make me?

The Pillowman is playing at the MAC through Oct. 11, Thursdays–Saturdays at 8 p.m.