Fintan O'Toole reviews Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman ahead of tonight's Cork opening.
The Pillowman, The Lowry, Manchester: Any summary of what happens in Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman is bound to make it sound gauche. The play, which opens tonight at the Cork Opera House (I saw it last week at The Lowry in Salford, near Manchester) has the kind of plot that might appeal to a callow enthusiast.
A writer in an unnamed totalitarian state is hauled in by the police, tortured and threatened with execution. A series of child murders bears uncanny similarities to the plots of his enigmatic but macabre stories.
He discovers that his brain-damaged brother, also in custody, has indeed carried out the killings, but he confesses to them anyway so that his stories will be saved for posterity by being attached to his police file. Art will live in spite of all the horror.
If one were to add that this play, although not staged until November 2003, was the first work of a then-unknown young writer, the chances of the whole thing being an overheated expression of self-pity by a naïve young man with a martyr complex would seem far too high for any rational punter.
That The Pillowman is instead a richly textured, beautifully poised fable that grips the attention as much for its wit as its horror, is a reminder of what a remarkable phenomenon McDonagh really is. The sheer stagecraft of the piece, its spellbinding shifts of tone and mood and its sly control of the pace of revelation, creates a remarkable balance.
On the one hand, The Pillowman has the exuberant, unembarrassed freshness of a beginner. On the other, it has the confidence of a master. John Crowley's production for Britain's National Theatre (re-directed for the tour by Toby Frow) holds this balance superbly, matching up-front energy with iron control.
For Irish audiences already familiar with McDonagh's West of Ireland plays, The Pillowman will appear to be something of a departure.
The mixture of humour and violence and the scenario of two brothers locked into an uncomfortably symbiotic relationship may be reminiscent in some respects of The Lonesome West. The influence of Tom Murphy's Bailegangaire, which is evident in The Beauty Queen of Leenane, can also be felt in the way The Pillowman switches from dialogue to storytelling and back again.
But the rhythm of the language owes much more to demotic London speech, and to the ways Joe Orton and Harold Pinter have twisted it into simultaneously comic and sinister shapes.
And if there is a presiding influence, it is from central Europe: the weird fairytales of the Brothers Grimm and Kafka's cryptic, metaphorical narratives in which the world seems both vividly real and utterly incomprehensible. More importantly, though, McDonagh has used these influences to make a play that feels original in the way it contains its complexities within an apparently simple structure.
The reflection on the connection between stories and suffering is richly ambiguous. The writer Katurian begins by insisting that the only duty of the storyteller is to tell a story, but it becomes clear that stories both reflect and can cause real pain.
This ambivalence is played out as a series of unresolved tensions and suggestive counterpoints, which result in no crude conclusion. And it is matched in theatrical terms by McDonagh's ability to use a variety of forms, from Grand Guignol dumb show to detective thriller and from social realism to slapstick.
This kind of dramatic fable demands of its actors that they bring to bear, not just what is required, but only what is required. They have to inhabit the story on its own terms, allowing in no extraneous reality. Moreover, Scott Pask's brilliant designs, with their vivid contrast between the multicoloured world of the stories and the monochrome environment of the interrogation centre create a context in which the visual presence of the actors is almost as important as their words and actions.
The pleasure of the National's production is thus intimately related to the discipline that allows the performers to be completely clear about their roles within the story. Jim Norton sets the tone with typical aplomb as the chief interrogator Tupolski, whose coldly playful sarcasm is, deliberately, far more terrifying than the plain menace of his sidekick, played by Ewan Stewart. Lee Ingleby's Katurian is a lovely mix of naivety and ruthlessness, and Edward Hogg imbues his brother with a deep sense of damage.
As a play in its own right The Pillowman is grimly, but often hilariously, enthralling. As an indication of McDonagh's capacity for a life beyond Leenane, it is intriguing.
The Pillowman opens tonight in Cork Opera House, and runs until Saturday
****
Zukerman, Neikrug, NCH, Dublin:
Beethoven - Sonatas in G Op 30 No 3 , in A Op 47 (Kreutzer), in G Op 96
Pinchas Zukerman's last Dublin recital, at the Royal Hospital Kilmainham in 1987, offered an intriguing display of effortless instrumental facility. His appearance at the National Concert Hall on Sunday revealed the same basic instrumental mastery, although it's no longer quite as effortless (the tone under stress can become unpleasant) nor is it quite as consistently reliable in terms of intonational purity.
Yet the sense of freedom, of a player in command of his situation, remains, although, as before, in emotional terms Zukerman rarely gives the impression of thoroughgoing involvement. It is perhaps this impression of disengagement which makes some of his most emphatic gestures seem coarse. It's as if the manner and the matter don't quite match, and the listener receives a message that's mixed, as when actors raise their voices but fail to produce a persuasive simulation of the passion they're seeking to communicate.
Zukerman and his pianist Marc Neikrug are long-time partners, and in terms of general approach they are well matched, though there were shaky patches at various points which indicated that Neikrug was far from having the best of evenings.
The musical interest in Zukerman's 1987 concert was provided by the high level of observation in the music-making, the minuteness of the player's response to the composers' explicit instructions. On Sunday, the observations seemed rather more blunt and the manner, as a result, altogether drier. It was all too easy to imagine performers of far more limited technical resources doing more for and with these three great sonatas than was achieved on this occasion. - Michael Dervan
****
Melvyn Tan, piano, Elmwood Hall, Belfast:
Haydn - Sonata in F Hob XVI - 23. Clementi - Sonata in B flat Op 24 No 2. Beethoven - Sonata in C Op 53 (Waldstein)
The Haydn Sonata in F major (No 23 in Hoboken's catalogue, No 38 in Christa Landon's edition) is one of those pieces which amateur pianists try to play.
It is always salutary, and sobering, to hear it played by a real pianist, but it may be that for a virtuoso the temptation is to rattle off a piece like this instead of shaping the phrases meaningfully.
Melvyn Tan brought a brilliance to the fingerwork which most aspiring pianists can only dream of, but in the outer movements the effect was generalised.
The slow movement was given a romantic treatment, beautiful in its way, conceived very much in terms of the expressive resources of the modern
piano.
Some of the same generalisation crept into the "Waldstein". Unlike the other works in this recital, part of a series of BBC Invitation Concerts entitled The Birth of the Sonata, this is a fully-fledged masterpiece and as such carries a weight of interpretative tradition.
One can ask if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the fact is that others have found a lot more in this sonata - more contrast, more depth of feeling in the mysterious pedaled episodes in the finale, and more profundity in the Adagio molto "Introduzione" to the concluding Rondo, which in Tan's hands became a sleek intermezzo.
The most interesting playing came in the Clementi Sonata in B flat; unfortunately not such an interesting piece, although Mozart remembered the opening theme when he wrote the Zauberflöte Overture. - Dermot Gault
