Detectives Michael McKeever and Gabriell Salgado interrogate Ryan Didator in Zoetic Stage’s The Pillowman / Photos by Justin Namon
By Bill Hirschman
A writer is telling yet another of his strange legend-like short stories about an abused child to a pair of sadistic interrogators investigating child murders in a totalitarian state.
His clear terror fades as he weirdly becomes increasingly animated and captivated in retelling stories that may or may not be autobiographical, that may or may not be a clue to the murders.
And as the horror-laden stories intensify, the audience in the Zoetic Stage is within seconds alternately chilled — and chuckling with laughter. And back again.
This production of The Pillowman lives up to this modern masterpiece’s unique amalgam of a terrifying nightmare and ebon black comedy. It is built around at least a half-dozen disparate themes that so fuse together that it is impossible to say what, if any, overarching theme exists.
Indeed, you can cherrypick from among them or come up with your own.
But the experience features deceptively precise if invisible direction, emotionally evocative yet minimalist production values and four superb performances of a difficult incisive multi-layered script.
Martin McDonagh’s general plot focuses on the writer Katurian, who has been arrested for no apparent reason and is viciously interrogated by two policemen in a fantasy police state. But initial sympathy begins to evaporate as we hear a procession of his stories that mix a slight fairy tale tone with Brothers Grimm horror stories of children being abused and murdered. The detectives believe they prove his complicity in real life child murders and they promise to summarily execute him once he inevitably confesses.
The screams in the next room come from his older brother Michal, a brain-damaged man whom the cops say has confessed and implicated Katurian as an accomplice. To reveal more would spoil inside-out turns that undercut the audience’s repeated discernments of Truth and reality, and guilt and innocence, and a dozen other facets as an indictment of the perception of and misperception of a situation and a character.
With death virtually inescapable regardless of guilt, Katurian tries to persuade the detectives to preserve his box of hundreds of stories although they want to burn them.
But throughout the evening, Katurian and others verbally relate nine stories – some brief, some quite long — that are animated on the theater walls with child-like pencil drawings of the characters.
The stories not only celebrate the magic of storytelling itself, but their tone cloak sub rosa secrets of the author – some breath-haltingly gruesome images reflecting the horrors in his past.
Some themes resonate a bit more strongly than usual this October with Halloween imminent but even more strongly with the fear of the likely political tumult ahead.
Director Stuart Meltzer masterfully limns the 15th season opener with careful pacing that can range from freight train dialogues to carefully paced storytelling. There are notably long periods – such as the reunion of Katurian and Michal – that McDonagh could have edited down, but Meltzer and the company work hard to keep you involved.
He and his cast deftly insert a score of classic timing of lines that provide humor amid the horror. One memorable example has Katurian misunderstanding an accusation of anti-Semitism and he responds seeking to conform with his captors’ beliefs: “I don’t have anything against Jews.” And then after precisely the right pause, he adds that underscores his doubt of what’s “right” in the current administration: “Should I have?”
Obviously, the other key ingredient are the four veteran South Florida actors playing at the top of their game with eyes that betray the secret thoughts underneath.
Michael McKeever plays detective Tupolski, the self-styled good cop, who actually is cold, maneuvering, canny and a master at the mind games that are as much torture as the physical assaults. His unnatural composure barely hides a deep anger that only slips out when his frigid mouth breaks lose in a sadistic grin at having imposed yet another moment of psychological pain. Like all the other characters, he has an aria that McKeever nails even as it seemingly meanders to what then turns out to be a pointed conclusion.
As the more visceral, brutal “bad cop” colleague Ariel, Gabriell Salgado succeeds in the difficult challenge of turning a corner from an aggressive, “bad cop” relying solely on intimidation of threatened violence.
Ryan Didato completely and convincingly inhabits Katurian’s swerving personality that can range from a terrified victim to someone proud of these stories that result from his cruel parents.
Seth Trucks
Save the most praise for Seth Trucks, a veteran actor here for diverse comedies and dramas, Macbeth and The Normal Heart. But we’ll argue that among the many productions he has starred in or supported, this may be his crowning achievement.
Only actors know how hard it is to convincingly play someone with different personalities violently swinging forward and back again making the various out of control ticks and clicks seeming natural. Michal can be bottomlessly naïve like a child one moment, and a moment later blithely taking credit for unspeakable acts. We are saying it now: A year from now, the Carbonell judges better have him on the nomination list.
McDonagh has always been known for visceral slightly off-beat plays such as The Beauty Queen of Leenane and The Cripple of Inishmaan, all taking place in a world that seems recognizable then swerves into something nearly surreal.
This work presents playgoers with a warning asterisk — besides that this is not a play to bring your kids if only because of the language. It requires adults to invest themselves and their attention because it is a quite long complex journey that will bore the casual patron, but fully reward those willing to totally commit to it.
Although the play is often mounted in a dark cellar stretching across a traditional full stage, Meltzer and his designers have surrounded the audience on four sides with a modest white circular platform usually brilliantly illuminated and room-high curtains upon which to project hand-written copies of the stories and the childish scrawled pencil drawings of the characters in the tales. On stage, there are only three white chairs, a box of the stories and a few odds and ends.
Meltzer has the characters circle around each other to increase the claustrophobic feel of the interrogation room. In the brother’s prison cell, the brothers walk nervously around the edge of the circle, forced to step over a pail, a sleeping pad and a chair.
The creative staff deserving considerable credit include B.J. Duncan’s scenic design; Laura Turnbull’s shades of gray costuming; Matt Corey and Nate Promkul’s sound including ominous thrumming plus appropriate screams elicited by torture; Becky Montero’s subtle lighting changes; the projections of the stories by McKeever and Steve Covey, and the all too convincing violent grappling by Paul Homza – usually unconvincing in such a small space. Plus the nightly oversight by stage manager Vanessa McCloskey and Alize Medina.
The result is an intense visceral tragedy shot through with sadness and death and surprisingly, humor – a unique look at the dark magic of storytelling.
The Pilllowman from Zoetic Stage will play through Nov. 10 at the Carnival Studio Theater at the Arsht Center in its Theater Up Close series, 1300 Biscayne Blvd., Miami.. Tickets are $56 -$61 through https://www.arshtcenter.org or calling 305-949-6722.
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