About the work
Play in two acts by Martin McDonagh, first performed on 13 November 2003 in the Cottesloe at the Royal National Theatre in London, with David Tennant in the lead role. It was McDonagh's first stand-alone play after his two Irish trilogies and the first not set in Ireland.
Plot
In a fictional totalitarian state, the writer Katurian K. Katurian is interrogated by two police officers because his brutal short stories about child abuse mirror a series of real child murders. Along with his intellectually disabled brother Michal, he comes under suspicion; over the course of the interrogation, the line between Katurian's fictional stories and the present-day questioning blurs.
Cultural significance
"The Pillowman" won the 2004 Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Play, and its Broadway production received the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award. It is considered McDonagh's most structurally intricate play, turning the power of storytelling itself into its subject rather than returning to the rural Ireland of his earlier work.