Pillowman Reviews- Page 2

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 12:51am

FINALLY, the Times is up and it's a Rave. He loves everything (including Crudup) and calls it the "season's most exciting and original new play":

"Comedies don't come any blacker than "The Pillowman," the spellbinding stunner of a play by Martin McDonagh that opened last night at the Booth Theater, starring Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum. Even those familiar with this British dramatist's blithe way with murder, mutilation and dismemberment, from works like "The Beauty Queen of Leenane" and "A Skull in Connemara," may be jolted by the events described and simulated so picturesquely in his latest offering. (Advisory note: severed fingers and heads, electric drills, barbed wire and premature burial all figure prominently.)

The laughs elicited by "The Pillowman" are the kind that trail into gulps and gasps, appropriate to a show that concerns a man under suspicion of torturing and killing children with no mercy and lots of imagination. The exquisitely lurid look of the show, directed by John Crowley and designed by Scott Pask, speaks to fears people mistakenly think they leave behind when they outgrow night lights. And one electric shock of a moment in the first act jolts comfort-food-fed Broadway audiences the way the shower scene in "Psycho" must have slapped moviegoers four decades ago.

Yet for all its darkness of plot and imagery, "The Pillowman" - which won the Olivier Award in London for best new play last year and arrives in New York in a shrewdly recast version - dazzles with a brightness now largely absent from Broadway. Mr. McDonagh's true subject is not gruesome crime and unjust punishment, although that's what a synopsis of the play, set largely in an interrogation room in an unnamed totalitarian state, might lead you to believe.

No, what "The Pillowman" is about, above all, is storytelling and the thrilling narrative potential of theater itself."
_______________________________________________________________


"An academic could make endless hay out of this play's narrative complexities and literary evocations (they notably include Kafka as well as Dostoyesvky), just as a sociologist or psychologist could go on about the sources and effects of fiction and its moral responsibility. You could even make a pretty thorough case for "The Pillowman" as an artistic apologia of sorts, directed at those who have dismissed Mr. McDonagh's previous works, set in a mayhem-prone rural Ireland, as pointlessly sensational and whimsical.

But to pursue these lines of thought is to fall into the very traps Mr. McDonagh has set to mock such analysis. Asked by Tupolski to explain symbols and subtext in one of his stories, Katurian answers, "It's a puzzle without a solution." Which is pretty much Mr. McDonagh's credo. But, oh, how he enjoys his puzzles. In this season's most exciting and original new play, he makes sure that we do, too."





http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/11/theater/reviews/11pill.html?8hpib

Updated On: 4/11/05 at 12:51 AM

[pab]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 12:55am

These were some really great reviews. It's been a long time since a show was show highly praised. Hopefully this will mean a long run.

[apdarcey]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 12:57am

it's a total hit with the critics.

[QueenMuppet]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:01am

Well, I can happily go to bed now. So happy that they got great reviews. Thanks for your exciting review threads again, Margo!

QM

[Razz77]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:04am

THANK YOU, BEN BRANTLEY!

I can now go to sleep...happy. Thanks for posting the reviews -- it'll be interesting to see what the Post has to say -- I would assume its not much different from the nearly across-the-board raves the show has gotten. I hope it has a long, healthy life and is not forgotten in the shadow of "Doubt" (haha) at awards time...

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:08am

pab - you said its been a long time since a show was praised this much, did you NOT read the DOUBT reviews. They ALL raves, the PILLOWMAN, while I do think it is a decent play and one deserving of several nice things said about it, has recieved a few mixed things said about it. Variety I believe has put it best so far. Cant agree with the USA TODAY (then again, who really ever does - they like everything) on calling it the best play of the season, that honor belongs to DOUBT and I believe the Tony voters should and will agree.

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:10am

It'll be interesting to see how the Tony voters go here. I personally think "Pillowman" is a far superior play, but "Doubt" is a safer, less disturbing choice and is an acclaimed new American play (Pulitzer winner) which would seem to be the kind of show the rather conservative voters typically would go for.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:13am

NY POST is up and it too is a Rave, although realizes it may not be for everyone.

http://nypost.com/theatre/42495.htm

[InfiniteTheaterFrenzy]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:18am

Oh Pillowman. SO f-ing amazing!!!

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:19am

Michael Sommers (Newark Star-Ledger) is mixed-to-positive (he also has a problem with Crudup):

"A tricky play not meant for the squeamish, "The Pillowman" merges McDonagh's taste for the mean-spirited and macabre with the sort of yarn-spinning format used by his contemporary, Conor McPherson, on works like "The Weir." The grim nature of these stories and the bleak environment of Katurian's harsh world recall Kafka's fiction.

A sick sense of humor that evilly bubbles through McDonagh's often foul-mouthed dialogue and the deadpan visual comedy of the acted-out vignettes punch up this adults-only occasion.

While the play proves to be quite an imaginative thriller, director John Crowley's production does not fully bring out its calculated terrors. It's said that the London original was brilliantly performed. This one obviously isn't.

Looking boyish and bewildered as Katurian, Billy Crudup depicts the hapless writer believably enough as a character except that he's really not much of a storyteller. Crudup possesses a light, relatively colorless voice, and he is unable to give sufficient dramatic flair to the eerie tales Katurian relates to others. It's a crucial weakness on the actor's part that unfortunately renders the play less enthralling than it might be.

His hair buzzed and his intensity fierce, Zeljko Ivanek is a pit bull of a detective. His more laid-back but no less lethal comrade is played by Jeff Goldblum in a dry manner reminiscent of the late Jerry Orbach. Michael Stuhlbarg portrays the mildly brain-damaged Michal with soft-spoken tones and a childish air. Four other actors do well by the pantomimed sequences.

Lit in dusky tones by Brian MacDevitt, production designer Scott Pask's deceptively austere setting later reveals several jolting surprises. Rendered with zithers and skittering strings, composer Paddy Cunneen's slithering music sets a neck-prickling mood.

If all of the acting were as effective as Crowley's overall staging, "The Pillowman" would be a mesmerizing event. As it is, the show provides plenty of sick thrills and scary chills calculated to keep viewers in delicious fear of what might happen next."


Newark Star-Ledger

[apdarcey]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:25am

so one thing that concerns me (and i haven't yet seen this play) is are the 2 kids in it going to be ok? is this material anything that could really screw them up?

i also am wondering if some critics' lack of mentioning crudup should be construed as him inhabiting the character so well that there's nothing you can really criticize, positive or nothing, because he is katurian? again, i haven't seen the play yet, just coming up with some ideas...

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:26am

Just for the sake of completeness, I'll do a Post review summary. Barnes gives it Four Stars:

"MARTIN McDonagh's "The Pillowman," which opened last night at the Booth Theatre, is an extraordinary play, a macabre fantasy, a horror ride in some theme park of the mind.

You emerge having been thrilled, entertained and disorientedly amused, perhaps guiltily so. Then again, who said child torture, murder and mutilation can't be funny?

Well, the British have a way with such things. Just think of the Grimm-style, comic-book horrors of off-Broadway's "Shockheaded Peter."

But "The Pillowman" is far more than brilliant graveyard wit, even when it suggests a dazzling mix of Charles Addams and Kafka.

McDonagh's multi-layered universe eerily conveys an awesome, upside-down world view where life is cynically brutalized and only art, however horribly reflective of society, holds a chance of survival.

What could have been a smug fortune-cookie message — life bad, art good — isn't, thanks to McDonagh's electrifying writing, bolstered by director John Crowley's brilliantly taut staging and Scott Pask's wildly imaginative designs."



http://nypost.com/theatre/42495.htm

Updated On: 4/11/05 at 01:26 AM

[MargoChanning]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 1:33am

Oh the kid actors in it are pros with lots of credits on their resumes -- I wouldn't worry for a second about them. They enact a couple of the short stories in pantomime and aren't part of the truly disturbing more realistic scenes in the play.

And a couple of critics (and myself) DO have a problem with Crudup here. He's a very pretty, well-trained actor with decent technique, but lacks the innate charisma and dynamism that the part requires. He's not exactly BAD and doesn't hurt the play, he's just rather pedestrian so some critics are giving him a pass here (and, to be fair, some like him), but I can think of at least a half dozen actors who would have been much much better.

Updated On: 4/11/05 at 01:33 AM

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 7:29am

I loved loved loved Crudup in it but maybe that was because I was 4th row and therefore close enough to really engage with his performance? My problem was Jeff Goldblum, who has essentially been giving the same performance for about 20 years now.

[leeinlondon]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 7:42am

Warning - the Theatremania review is full of BIG spoilers and I would certainly not recommend anyone reading it before they see the play.

[popcultureboy]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 8:08am

Just read the Theatremania review. You ain't kidding.

[LaCageAuxFollesFan2]

Posted: 4/11/05 at 8:56am

Daily News...

I wouldnt call it an all out RAVE, but it is certainly good!

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/theater/story/298544p-255629c.html