'Pillowman' Anything But Fluffy

In the opening scene of “The Pillowman,” a man, covered to the waist in a rough burlap sack, lies sprawled on a table, while a lone wooden rocking horse rests forgotten in a corner. In this one eerie visual tableau, the play’s thematic juxtaposition of childhood innocence and dark violence is powerfully established. This startling contrast underscores the drama of the entire production. Directed by Ilinca Radulian ’11, and playing at the Loeb Experimental Theater until April 24, “The Pillowman” is a dark and comedic theatrical experience whose character-driven plot comes to life with the skillfully nuanced acting of a four-person cast. Accented by glimmers of dark humor, creative props, and an unusual set, “The Pillowman” creates a haunting world of philosophical and psychological complexity.

The play tells the story of Katurian (James R. Morris GSAS ’10), a young writer who is taken into police custody because a string of recent murders emulate the plots of his gruesomely violent children’s stories. When his mentally retarded twin sister, Michal (Isabel Q. Carey ’12), confesses to the murders, Katurian accepts the fact that he will soon be executed, but desperately struggles to ensure his stories are preserved after his death. The play is told, in part, through reenactments of Katurian’s tales, including a darkly autobiographical vignette that pins the root of his perverse imagination to the experience of hearing his parents torture Michal during their childhood.

Skinny and animated, with a mop of brown curls, Morris is equal parts charming and helpless, for he immediately draws the audience in with his panicked anxiety and confusion about his sudden imprisonment. It seems impossible that such a charismatic and haphazard individual could pen horrific tales of child murder, or suffocate his parents with pillows at the age of 14, but Morris skillfully captures the chiaroscuro of his character’s vulnerability and violence.

Isabel Q. Carey ’12 conveys through her body the psychological destruction of her mind. In the scene where Katurian rescues her from torture, the pair rise and fall together in a dance sequence that captures the heartbreakingly graceful fragility of their limp and beaten bodies. Later, Carey imbues her psychologically stunted character with charming youthful energy, pulling at her toes, stretching her arms, and kicking up her feet in a convincing portrayal of youthful vibrancy. Carey navigates her role with nuance, as she is able to realize the wide-eyed, giggly antics of Michal without verging on what could easily have become a cloying depiction of childhood.

Tupolski (Jackson M. Kernion ’12) and Ariel (Dan J. Giles ’13), the detectives who keep Katurian in custody, complete the cast. The pair effectively opens with the classic “good cop, bad cop” routine, only to reverse their roles as the plot develops. Kernion is cool, cunning, and calculated, while Giles positively burns with aggression and rage, lashing out in fury at the slightest provocation. Giles’s thundering demeanor is artfully tempered, however, by the presence of a few childlike habits, such as a penchant for sucking on lollipops. These unexpected touches add depth to his performance and invoke the disturbing contrast between youthful innocence and graphic violence that permeates the play.

The props in “The Pillowman” are as arresting and inventive as the portrayal of the characters, and further contribute to the mood of anxiety and fear in the play. Instead of actual books depicting Katurian’s stories, a stack of blank white sheets with cutout silhouettes of children represent the writer’s haunting tales. A note scrawled in blood is bundled as a tightly-wound accordion, so that the words on the folio explode as a red streak when the note is unfurled.

Giles often dons garishly gender-bending outfits to depict frightful women in narrated performances of Karturian’s stories. In one, he forces a tight red dress and thick strands of pearls over his detective’s uniform. Even more bizarre, Katurian’s costume for the Pillowman (a character from one of his stories) is a blanket-jacket with sleeves and a bonnet-like pillow-hat which, though giving the appearance of softness, belies his life’s sinister work.

The set evokes the sense of claustrophobia in “The Pillowman”—psychological because of the brutal torture the detectives inflict on Katurian and physical because of the intense proximity mediated by the space of the Loeb Ex itself. The set incorporates a giant translucent box, an even smaller cage imposed in the room where Katurian is imprisoned. The box is meant to represent the room where Michal was tortured as a child. Whether illuminated with sinister green neon during a scene of violence, or adorned along its edges with garlands of somber flowers in moments of quiet mourning, the set piece is a striking and unusually effective accent to the performance.

The show’s score, though used sparingly, enhances the production’s chilling tone. In Katurian’s confession scene, a spooky, romping rock riff injects the play with electric energy. At other times, the faint, haunting sounds of a children’s choir waft over Katurian narrating his horrid tales or characters recounting painful memories.

Ultimately, ”The Pillowman” raises a number of darkly philosophical questions about the accountability of the mentally ill in violent crimes, the responsibility artists have for the emotions provoked by their art, and, perhaps most painfully, whether victims of violent abuse are ever capable of healing. Katurian seems to provide an answer to this final uncertainty when he snarls at his sister, “There are no happy endings in real life!” “The Pillowman” does not have a happy ending either—but it is this raw and unflinching exploration of complex, volatile issues which makes the show an intelligent, thought-provoking drama.

—Staff writer Clio C. Smurro can be reached at csmurro@fas.harvard.edu.