Review: The Pillowman Gets First London Revival, Starring Lily Allen

On paper, Martin McDonagh’s 2003 play The Pillowman shouldn’t work. A plot about child murder, the dystopian state, and violent perversions, it is told through lengthy, protracted monologues and bouts of snappy, often witty and irreverent dialogue. In the wrong hands, it could be a tonal and formal mess. But then so could The Banshees of Inisherin or In Bruges – as his later films have proven, McDonagh is a deranged magician of a playwright – taking a hodgepodge of styles and storylines and mushing them together into something resembling profound art.

Twenty years after it was first staged at the National Theatre in London, the show is back on UK soil in a new production served up by Matthew Dunster, who previously shepherded McDonagh’s Hangmen to Broadway. The main draw here is a gender-switched central protagonist of Katurian (first name, middle name and surname), played by British music star-turned-actress Lily Allen, following in the footsteps of her brother and Game of Thrones alum Alfie.

As in Hangmen, Dunster understands that the best way to get McDonagh done is to do him fast. Scenes are rattled through at a relentless, unapologetic pace. Comedic beats are delivered either with precision or simply trampled over before being given the chance to ferment.

The plot is simultaneously straightforward and deftly intricate. There’s been a murder! A couple of murders, to be precise – carried out in a fashion that instantly incriminates a short story writer and her older brother. They are both hauled in for questioning by two ruthless cops – cogs in the wheel of an unnamed, unidentifiable yet seemingly all-consuming totalitarian dictatorship. Torture, brutality, and execution are on the menu.

As can only be expected from any McDonagh play, gratuitous violence, glibly racist characters, and a casual nod to antisemitism are all there and delivered with lashings of winky cynicism, perhaps meaning the text shows its age more than some of his other work. But it’s still a cracking play – sowing the seeds for a surprisingly satisfying conclusion that ties up various disparate strands with unexpected catharsis.

As she did in her West End debut 2:22 A Ghost Story (also directed by Dunster), Allen fares well on stage – sincere, eloquent and never overly maniacal in a role that could easily slip into histrionics in the wrong hands. She most certainly has better material to work with here than in her freshman stage outing, to the extent that you can trace a quite definite character arc as Katurian moves from bewilderment to assured catharsis.

She is helped by a variety of foils – each with their own quirks and dramatic nuances. Inside No 9’s Steve Pemberton plays leading detective Tupolski, breezily wafting around Anna Fleischle’s surprisingly complex interrogation room set (“I’m the good cop,” he assures Katurian, a statement that is only true from a certain perspective) and ruminating on life, the universe and, morbidly, blind children being run down by trains. Matilda alum and The Stranger star Paul Kaye is all bluster, blunder, and brutality as Tupolski’s number two, Ariel – a man whose principles manifest themselves in pain. Completing the central quartet is Matthew Tennyson as Katurian’s tortured brother Michael, his role contained to a single, pivotal scene at the heart of the play. Tennyson fares admirably with a tricky role – though never fully grapples with the tragedy or, in McDonagh’s eyes, comedy of Michal’s life.

Dunster throws in some excellent bells and whistles across the 150-minute journey – Dick Straker in particular pulls off a magnificent bout of video design at the start of the second act. With material like The Pillowman it’s pretty hard to go wrong – and Dunster has certainly delivered a solid, full-blooded, and fully bloody, iteration of one of this century’s most provocative plays.