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Sep. 25--Few things terrify artists more than being held responsible for real-world horrors. You can't blame Stanley Kubrick for the copycat killings after "A Clockwork Orange," their defense goes, any more than you can Oliver Stone for the world's "Natural Born Killers" or the devisers of "Mortal Kombat" for nihilistic, trigger-happy children. Artists are morally obliged to reflect the world they perceive. And if whackos out there get the wrong idea? That's the price of freedom of expression! Whaddaya want instead? Government censorship?
Martin McDonagh, the wunderkind Anglo-Irish playwright with the eye for the violently sensational, proffered that argument earlier in his astonishing career when numerous jealous, censorial traditionalists roundly accused him of being an atrophied, mass-mediatized writer-kid who had replaced romantic Irish lyricism with scalding, rootless cynicism.
But when you watch McDonagh's brilliant "Pillowman," a prismatic meditation on artists and moral culpability and one of the very best plays of the past decade, you see this astonishing writer's fears laid out before you in a gripping and perversely comic horror show. Doing good in the world -- or, more accurately, his not doing good -- seems to have kept him awake all these nights. And these are bone-chilling nightmares he now is eager to share.
Given its history in these matters, the Steppenwolf Theatre Company is the perfect Chicago repository for "The Pillowman," a hit in London and New York. But because the piece, which opened Sunday, is arriving here relatively soon after its Broadway run, there clearly was a desire to do something different from the original, critically acclaimed production from director John Crowley (a production that originated in 2003 at London's National Theatre and was essentially remounted on Broadway, albeit with a different cast). Because it caused people to scream uncontrollably in the theater, that production won't be quickly forgotten.
Set in a totalitarian state, "Pillowman" opens on a writer (Jim True-Frost as Katurian) undergoing a brutal police interrogation by good-cop Tupolski (Tracy Letts) and bad-cop Ariel (Yasen Peyankov), apparently because of the violent nature of his work. At first, McDonagh wants us to think this is because the government doesn't like Katurian's little stories, which feature the torture and murder of children. But we quickly learn otherwise. Someone out there is abusing real children in practical application of Katurian's peculiar creative oeuvre. And maybe the murderer is Katurian's mentally retarded brother, Michal (Michael Shannon), who is being interrogated down the hall. And there's one other theatrical rub: As Katurian tells us some of his stories, we see them acted out in vivid three-dimension.
Crowley set the original production in a confined space that looked like a generic Eastern European prison, and Katurian's terrible tales were performed above the action, in a black void of the dark soul. But director Amy Morton's more expansive version seems to be set in a cavernous old theater, or a meeting room with a stage. A huge proscenium stage -- rendering Katurian's horrors as if they're some creepy old carnival sideshow -- moves back and forward toward the audience. Granted, this is a way for Morton and her designer, Loy Arcenas, to deal with this theater's difficult soaring verticals. But it kills the claustrophobia of the play, and, ironically, given Steppenwolf's reputation, the violent vignettes are here performed in a more stylized fashion, making them artier but less frightening. Many will find the show disturbing, as the playwright intends. But I doubt you will be scared out of your wits or stifling screams. Which is a shame.
Morton's production compensates by focusing on powerful acting. Letts and Peyankov make the kind of malevolent double act beloved by fans of the plays of Harold Pinter. Peyankov could do to be somewhat nastier early on, but once it gets fired up, their relationship makes for some blistering theater. Superbly cast and dominant, Letts -- who recalls a nastier version of David Letterman -- fires on every one of his combustible cylinders. True-Frost, looking like a dangerous, vulnerable, brilliant geek, is a tad more eccentric than the character needs, but it's rich acting, amply matched by Shannon, who dances on a knife edge that few actors reach.
The horrors may be damped, but the Steppenwolf production amps up instead the absurdist comedy inherent in a work that deliberately dances around and across genre. Fair enough. This is by no means a Conservative play -- in the end, McDonagh is clearly riffing on Keats or Wilde and arguing that whatever the complexity of the sensations a writer may seek or provoke, it is better for all parties to live and suffer than know only the numbness of blind obedience and death. But it's still a work about the insecurity of the writer -- the constant worry of critical misinterpretation, and the nagging sense that just pointing out human pain might be morally unconscionable in a world that needs things done.
"The Pillowman"
When: Through Nov. 12
When: Steppenwolf Theatre, 1635 N. Halsted St.
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $20-60 at 312-335-1650.
cjones5@tribune.com
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Copyright (c) 2006, Chicago Tribune
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