The Pillowman

Winner of two Tony Awards and an Olivier Award for Best Play, Martin McDonagh’s ‘The Pillowman’ opens with an incarcerated writer being interrogated for the crime of writing stories that dare to trespass across the border between reality and fiction. Over the course of the evening, the tension mounts with the revelation of parallel interviews taking place in the adjoining cell with the writer’s sister. What debt do we owe to family? How far are we willing to go for love? As blackly comic as it is lyrical, McDonagh’s masterpiece explores the violence of word and world, the personal responsibility of authors to their readers, and how the most ancient of stories inevitably give birth to strange, and disturbing, new tales. Director Cher Coad comments: ‘We write with an ink of blood, on a canvas of skin, with the broken bones of old words as our tools, and our stories are the ghosts of stories past. The Chinese have more experience of these things than anyone, hence the call for this new production.’ Wholly reimagined to reflect the ongoing passion and turmoil of contemporary Chinese history, this version of ‘The Pillowman’ will keep the audience on the edge of its seat to the last line, and leave behind burning questions about the dangers and delights of writing, fantasy, cheating and conning.