The Pillowman

Premiere: 10 May 2007

Written by Martin Mc Donagh

Duration: 3 hours 30 minutes with 1 intermission

The site of the play http://www.pillowman.ru/

If you are fans of the films of Quentin Tarantino, Alfred Hitchcock and David Lynch, if you love the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm, the novels of Franz Kafka and Fyodor Dostoevsky, then you certainly will not leave indifferent play on the play of Martin McDonagh.

Are the manuscripts really burning? Does the artist bear responsibility for his works? Is the "tear of a child" important in the modern world?

"Man-pillow" (The Pillowman) - the first in the history of the Moscow Art Theater, a thriller with elements of art horror.

Detective storyline, acute psychological conflict and amazing humor by nature.

In 2007, the creators of the performance were awarded the theatrical prize "Seagull" in the nominations "Synchronized Swimming" / Best Actor Ensemble and "Mask of Zorro" / Best Actor (Anatoly Bely).

SYNOPSIS

In an interrogation room in an unnamed totalitarian dictatorship, Katurian Katurian, a writer, is being interrogated by two detectives. Next door, Katurian’s mentally disabled brother Michal waits. The detectives want to know why Katurian’s stories feature gruesome plots about child murder and torture, and in particular, why they seem to mirror a string of recent child murders in the area. This brutal dark comedy from Martin McDonagh, the master of the horror-comedy, poses unanswerable questions: Can stories hold the power to cause atrocities? Where is the line between truth and fairy tale? Is a life of horror worth living at all? Drawing on inspiration as diverse as Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Kafka, and Antonin Artaud, The Pillowman is a dark, twisty, and utterly unforgettable masterpiece from one of Ireland’s most treasured writers.

New York production: https://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/theater/reviews/a-storytelling-instinct-revels-in-horrors-fun.html