The Pillowman, Duke of York’s Theatre review ★★★★★

Fair play to Martin McDonagh. To write a play that runs on grisly tales of child abuse, with some casual racism thrown in for good measure, and make it horribly, guiltily compelling is quite something. And The Pillowman is a very good play. But it’s not for everyone, and perhaps its lack of mass appeal is in part why the play has never before been staged in the West End, despite winning the 2004 Olivier for Best New Play. Fair play also, then, to director Matthew Dunster (2:22 – A Ghost Story), who recouples with McDonagh following the success of 2015’s Hangmen to steer it bravely into theatreland.

It’s an eerie but cautious version of the play, with the horror dialled up thanks to vivid stage designs by Anna Fleischle (another Hangmen alumni). While the play’s wicked humour seems muted here, at least in comparison to a previous production this writer enjoyed, it’s perhaps more palatable by 2023 standards. The big subversion, of course, is making the play’s gruesome storyteller, Katurian, a woman, for which Dunster has reunited with his original 2:22 lead, pop-star-turned-actor Lily Allen.

Lily Allen (Katurian), Steve Pemberton (Tupolski) The Pillowman. Photo: Johan Persson

Allen cuts a fragile figure as Katurian, the writer scarred by the discovery of the sick experiment their parents played, involving torturing their brother Michael (Matthew Tennyson, humorously camp and sly). Her slight frame and jittery nature adds an additional layer of vulnerability to McDonagh’s existing paradox: that this writer of twisted tales involving the murders of children is surprisingly likeable in person.

It takes place, for the most part, in a dingy police interview room and neighbouring cell, where Tupolski (a no-nonsense Steve Pemberton) and Ariel (an explosive Paul Kaye), two police officers abusing their power in this unnamed totalitarian state, play good cop and bad cop with the arrested Katurian, at least initially. Under Dunster’s direction, Pemberton is served a tough deal as Tupolski, the seemingly nicer of the two who eventually reveals a rotten, racist core. Dunster shies away from the full, horrific potential of the part to land laughs, but offers little by way of an alternative, meaning his mic-drop monologue lands flat.

Lily Allen (Katurian), Matthew Tennyson (Michal). Photo: Johan Persson

With the help of Dick Straker’s videography, Fleischle illustrates Katurian’s progressively dark stories with nightmarish visions of shadow parents torturing children and thick woodland closing in. Credit to make-up supervisor Suzanne Scotcher too, for a late-on trick involving the apparition of head wounds.

‘What’s the point of it?,’ you might ask. Is it a musing on the cyclical nature of abuse? Or is McDonagh taunting us with the darkest, taboo-spurning micro-plots he could think of? The Pillowman's recurring points on the power of imagination and the role of storytelling as a passage to free speech in a dictatorship are surely part of its message too. But the play’s cleverness is that its meaning remains coyly beyond reach, keeping us guessing until the end. Like Katurian’s stories, which tumble into conclusions far bleaker than their obvious trajectory, so does the play as a whole.

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