The Pulitzer is only for American authors. McDonagh is Irish, so Pillowman wasn't eligible. There's also a preference for works dealing with American culture in some way; I remember a minor brouhaha over I Am My Own Wife's victory last year. I think Caroline should have won that time around.
I saw both and also preferred Pillowman. Doubt was a neat and tidy little exercise in audience manipulation, extremely well executed but not particularly original and so transparent. Pillowman was big and challenging and original and exciting. And, though Charlie Isherwood missed it, it was in fact about something, it just wasn't going to give it to you in a PowerPoint outline like Doubt did. Doubt's easy accessibility is a virtue that has given it great popularity, but I like a play that I have to work to take apart, not one that is so obvious (I liked Woolf a lot as well).
"WHEN is the winter of our discontent?"
"NOW is the winter of our discontent!"
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Updated On: 9/4/05 at 10:47 PM