02.19.07
The Pillowman Takes the Armory's Main Stage
Portland Center Stage's next featured show comes with a warning. Apparently The Pillowman, which starts tomorrow at the Armory, contains some scenes which may challenge your comfort level.
Here's an interesting video of the cast members addressing the play's controversial nature.
The official PCS description after the jump...
THE PILLOWMAN
The Pillowman is one of the most celebrated and controversial works an English-speaking author has produced in the past few years. While Martin McDonagh’s dazzling mystery, with its dizzying mixture of comedy and suspense, has held audiences rapt and won awards in London and New York, the play has also challenged the comfort levels of many viewers.
THE PLAY CONTAINS SCENES OF A VIOLENT AND DISTURBING NATURE.
Portland Center Stage is committed to bringing stories to life that inspire and intensify dialogue in our community. Sometimes those stories celebrate what is best in humanity; sometimes they express what is most terrifying. The Pillowman raises enormously complex and thorny questions. Should art operate within the bounds of what society defines as morally acceptable behavior? Or by its very nature, does art—like our dreams—require an explosion of the moral bounds we accept during our waking lives?
Whatever your response to this production, we encourage you to engage your friends in dialogue about the feelings it elicits.
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Comments (2)
The proper warning for Portland Center Stage to issue about THE PILLOWMAN is that if you miss it, you may be missing the best piece of theater in the last ten years.
In their program notes, both artistic director Chris Coleman and director Rose Riordan mentioned the giddy experience of reading the play for the first time. I shared that experience. I laughed. I cried. I was astonished. The experience of reading THE PILLOWMAN is like being told the best bedtime story ever by a substitute baby-sitter your parents found at the last minute.
To create the same sense of wonder in adults that classic fairy tales produce in children, playwright Martin McDonagh has to use psychological triggers that will affect grown-ups. Portland Center Stage’s production doesn’t shy away from moments that are painstakingly engineered to make us uncomfortable. The threat that they will go too far is crucial to our ultimate enjoyment.
I make the claim that THE PILLOWMAN is the best piece of theater in the last ten years because it is so difficult to pull off. Good psychological thrillers are few and far between. Psychological thrillers that are so genuinely moving are fewer and further between. Plays that evoke such a visceral response come around about once every ten years.
Posted by Bruce | February 23, 2007 10:59 AM
Hey Bruce,
Nicely put. I'd like to contact you regarding permission to use some of this to update our website with patron feedback. You can find me through pcs.org under marketing/PR.
thanks,
thom
Posted by thom | February 27, 2007 5:14 PM