What’s on Monday: The Pillowman

THEATRE

The Pillowman
Gaiety Theatre. Mar 2-14 7.30 (Sat mat 3pm) from €19.65
gaietytheatre.ie

Written 20 years ago, but unproduced until 2003, it has taken until now for Martin McDonagh's The Pillowman to receive its Irish premiere.

The surprise of Decadent Theatre Company’s considered and imaginative production is that it may have been worth the wait.

Director Andrew Flynn has already shown an intuitive and adventurous understanding of McDonagh’s work, and faced with what is the writer’s best play, he and designer Owen MacCarthaigh, sound designer Carl Kennedy and a well-placed cast enhance its grisly fairy tale dimensions while steadily undermining the reality of everything we see.

“The first duty of a storyteller is to tell stories,” says the protagonist, a writer under the darkest of suspicions. Decadent reminds you, the second duty is the way you tell them.