Word: plays
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Dates: during 2010-2019
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...director explains that this production is also an exploration in form, as the play delves into the meaning of musicals without the defining element of song...
...play tells the story of Katurian (James R. Morris GSAS ’10), a young writer who is taken into police custody because a string of recent murders emulate the plots of his gruesomely violent children’s stories. When his mentally retarded twin sister, Michal (Isabel Q. Carey ’12), confesses to the murders, Katurian accepts the fact that he will soon be executed, but desperately struggles to ensure his stories are preserved after his death. The play is told, in part, through reenactments of Katurian’s tales, including a darkly autobiographical vignette...
...show’s score, though used sparingly, enhances the production’s chilling tone. In Katurian’s confession scene, a spooky, romping rock riff injects the play with electric energy. At other times, the faint, haunting sounds of a children’s choir waft over Katurian narrating his horrid tales or characters recounting painful memories...
...provocation. Giles’s thundering demeanor is artfully tempered, however, by the presence of a few childlike habits, such as a penchant for sucking on lollipops. These unexpected touches add depth to his performance and invoke the disturbing contrast between youthful innocence and graphic violence that permeates the play...
...props in “The Pillowman” are as arresting and inventive as the portrayal of the characters, and further contribute to the mood of anxiety and fear in the play. Instead of actual books depicting Katurian’s stories, a stack of blank white sheets with cutout silhouettes of children represent the writer’s haunting tales. A note scrawled in blood is bundled as a tightly-wound accordion, so that the words on the folio explode as a red streak when the note is unfurled...