Newman 1

As the wise Katurian Katurian Katurian once said, “people who only write about what

they know only write about what they know because they’re too fucking stupid to make anything

up.”1 After all, every dark storyteller can’t be Edgar Allen Poe. Such is the life of Martin

McDonagh, the playwright who wrote dark, gruesome stories, despite his modest upbringing.

McDonagh was born in London, England to Irish parents. They made a strong effort to

enforce their lifestyle on their son. He was placed in a Catholic school and brought on trips to

Ireland every summer, but McDonagh was a typical angst-filled teenager, motivated by punk

rock groups of the 80s and 90s. But a happy balance was found between his heritage and his

generation. McDonagh learned to accept the aspects of Irish culture that were important to him,

and these became prevalent aspects of his early plays. The fact that McDonagh lived in England

gave him a unique perspective on life in Ireland. At the age of 16, he dropped out of school to

become a writer, but was soon living on public assistance. He worked various odd jobs while

developing and refining his characteristic grotesque, dark style.

In 1994, McDonagh wrote his first seven plays over a nine month stretch. They mainly

focused on the parts of West Ireland that he was familiar, but were much darker in tone. He told

Newsweek’s Jack Kroll that he wrote his first play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane “like it was a

conversation I heard in my head.”2 Despite the quick success of these seven plays, McDonagh

had only seen a handful of staged productions in his life. Most of his inspiration was drawn from

his understanding how human interactions. He filled in the technical details along the way.

However, after writing the initial seven plays, McDonagh hit a sort of dry spell, during which he

produced very little new material. Many believed that he had simply run out of literary ability

1 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., p. 76

2 "Martin McDonagh." Newsmakers, Issue 3. Thomson Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010.

Newman 2

and that he was a fluke that history would soon forget. But with the 2004 introduction of The

Pillowman, the world was again blow away by McDonagh’s talent.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane, which was first produced by the Druid Theater in 1996,

won McDonagh the Most Promising Playwright award from the London Evening Standard

Theatre Awards. His remaining two plays in the Leenane Trilogy, A Skull in Connemara and The

Lonesome West were staged in Galway, Ireland in 1997. He created a second trilogy, known as

the Aran Isle plays, but only the first two, The Cripple of Inishmaan and The Lieutenant of

Inishmore were ever produced. McDonagh refused to publish The Banshee of Inisheer because

he didn’t think it was good enough. By the early 2000s, McDonagh “became the first playwright

since William Shakespeare to have four plays running simultaneously on the professional

London stage.”3 By the time The Pillowman was published, McDonagh had enough notoriety

that it quickly made its way to Broadway. Since then, The Pillowman and all of his other pieces

have been performed around the world. In March of 2010, McDonagh premiered his new play on

Broadway, A Behanding in Spokane.

Despite McDonagh’s success as a playwright, his original passion was in screenwriting.

To date, he has written and directed two films. The first was a short film called Six Shooter,

which was released in 2004 and won an Oscar. McDonagh’s first full-length movie was In

Bruges, which shared many similarities with his stage pieces, despite the difference in medium.

In Bruges was also nominated for an Oscar.

The content that McDonagh incorporates into his play is often subject to a great deal of

conflict in the theater world. Intense scenes of violence, death, mutilation, and the absence of

hope are all commonplace in McDonagh’s plays. For some, this is a bit too much. There were

3 "Martin McDonagh." Newsmakers, Issue 3. Thomson Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Gale, 2010.

Newman 3

reported cases of people getting up and leaving in the middle of The Pillowman because they

found the content too offense. When working with such risqué content, there is always the

possibility that someone will consider the plays to be, as Katurian says in The Pillowman, “a

puzzle without a solution.”4

But there are also those who “have remained transfixed, sometimes gasping with horror

and sometimes shaking with laughter.”5 In a review of a revival of The Cripple of Inishmaan

produced at the Linda Gross Theater in New York City in early 2008, Ben Brantley notes how

“sentimental warmth can suddenly scorch and coziness turn claustrophobic.”6 Similarly, he says

how “the laughs elicited by ‘The Pillowman’ are the kind that trail into gulps and gasps.”7

From an actor’s perspective, the small casts and intensity of the dialogue make his shows

“the sort actors spend entire careers waiting for.”8 Even the a twelve year old girl who reenacts

the trials of Jesus Christ in The Pillowman had nothing more to say about her part other than “it’s

fun!”9

McDonagh’s most recent piece, A Behanding in Spokane has not been received very well.

At the time that The New Yorker reviewed it, the show was only two weeks old, but much of the

criticism came down to the performance. Being McDonagh’s second play set away from Ireland,

4 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., p.17

5 Mcgrath, Charles. "'Pillowman' Crowd Not Always Ready For What's Next. " The New York Times .    (April 26, 2005): E1(L). The New York Times. Gale. Malden Pub.Schls. - Library Media Ctrs.. 16 Mar. 2010 

6 Brantley, Ben. "On a Barren Isle, gift of the gab and subversive charm. " The New York Times .    158.54532 (Dec 22, 2008): C1(L). The New York Times. Gale. Malden Pub.Schls. - Library Media Ctrs.. 16 Mar. 2010 

7 Brantley, Ben. "A Storytelling Instinct Revels in Horror's Fun. " The New York Times .    (April 11, 2005): E1(L). The New York Times. Gale. Malden Pub.Schls. - Library Media Ctrs.. 16 Mar. 2010 

8 Marks, Peter. "CRITIC'S NOTEBOOK; Depicting The Hurt Of Love Curdling Into Hate. " The New York Times .    (April 21, 1998): NA. The New York Times. Gale. Malden Pub.Schls. - Library Media Ctrs.. 16 Mar. 2010 

9 Collins, Glenn. "Pillow Talk. " The New York Times .    (April 12, 2005): B2(L). The New York Times. Gale. Malden Pub.Schls. - Library Media Ctrs.. 16 Mar. 2010

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Hilton Als finds the writing much less universal than The Pillowman. In particular, the dialogue

for and around an African American character creates him as more of a caricature than it points

out racial inequalities in our society. And the title role, played by Christopher Walken, does little

to save the performance. McDonagh wrote the lead around Walken, so there is little sense of

character depth or real acting. But he is still a young, promising playwright and only time will

tell how his pieces progress and his style develops.

Martin McDonagh focuses his works on the inner conflict humans face between freedom

and security. Storytelling and lies provide his characters with an escape from the dullness of

everyday life while simultaneously putting them in danger and, in some cases, leading to their

downfalls. He creates ordinary moments of human weakness and twists both the audience’s and

the characters’ perceptions of reality through the stories and lies they tell in an effort to free

themselves from the monotony of their world.

In Mcdonagh’s The Cripple of Inishmaan, the deprived “Cripple Billy” is trapped on the

island of Inishmaan with nothing to do and very little respect. But when he discovers that a

filmmaker is producing a movie on a nearby island, he sets out to be in it. By leaving the island

of Inishmaan, Billy realizes everything he was trying to escape was everything he needed in life.

But the lies that Billy tells to leave in the first place come back to bite him. Though he forges a

doctors’ note saying that he has tuberculosis, by the end of the story, he is actually dying of the

disease.

The energy of the first scene of the play comes almost entirely from Johnnypateenmike.

Johnny makes a living by hearing and telling stories. He begins by recounting local gossip but

eventually leads up to the announcement about the American filmmaker. He delivers the news

right as Cripple Billy enters the room. Prior to his entrance, Billy states that he “did nothing at

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all” (9) The people of Inishmaan are not very accepting of Billy and he is an outcast of the

population. Johnny’s news about the movie inspires Billy and gives him motivation to leave

behind the island. This opportunity represents everything that Billy desires: fame, fortune, and

respect rather than living with his aunts for the rest of his life.

After this turning point, there is a sense of vivacity to not only Billy’s life, but to the

island of Inishmaan. Johnny quickly discovers the doctors’ note that Billy uses to get off the

island, and before long everyone knows that Billy has run away. This sends Billy’s mellow aunts

into a fit of nervousness. And though people try to hide that he has tuberculosis, the word

eventually spreads and more panic fills the aunts as they realize that Billy has died. Though Billy

is the only one who has physically escapes Inishmaan, his disappearance helps the rest of the

townspeople emerge from their lifeless routines.

But Billy does return, alive and well, and with a new appreciation for his aunts. However,

this joyous reunion is undercut by the revelation that Billy does, in fact, have tuberculosis. It is

also revealed that Billy’s parents would have killed him when he was born, had Johnny not saved

him. Rather than telling Billy the truth, though, Johnny does what he does best: he makes up a

story. He tells Billy that his parents loved him. Though both Billy and Johnny create false

stories, McDonagh never condemns these acts. Had Billy stayed on Inishmaan his entire life, he

may have never truly lived a single day, but at the end of the play, though he is still dying from

tuberculosis, he gets a date with Helen. Similarly, Johnny’s lie allows Billy to escape the pains of

loss and live the rest of his short life with some sense of peace.

The Pillowman is “in part about the nature of storytelling – its power to amuse, frighten

and enchant – and it both embodies and dramatizes all of those possibilities”10. The main

10 Mcgrath, Charles. "'Pillowman' Crowd Not Always Ready For What's Next. " The New York Times .    (April 26, 2005): E1(L). The New York Times. Gale. Malden Pub.Schls. - Library Media Ctrs.. 16 Mar. 2010 

Newman 6

character, Katurian, writes dark stories that often end in mutilated or dead children. He is trapped

in a police interrogation room as two detectives investigate three cases of missing children, two

of which are found to have been murdered in ways similar to Katurian’s stories.

The setting of this play is particularly important. Though the entire performance takes

place in the interrogation room, the setting is clearly defined to be a totalitarian dictatorship in a

nameless country. If, in the room, the detectives have all of the power anyway, one might

wonder why McDonagh bothers establishing the outside government, especially if it is never

seen. The government functions to contrast with Katurian’s belief about storytelling:

‘The first duty of a storyteller is to tell a story.’ Or was it ‘The only duty of a

storyteller is to tell a story’? Yeah, it might have been ‘The only duty of a storyteller is to

tell a story.’ I can’t remember, but anyway, that’s what I do, I tell stories. No axe to

grind, no anything to grind. No social anything whatsoever.11

It is irrelevant whether Katurian wants to challenge the government. The fact that he is trying to

tell stories is enough to incite the force of the government.

But these stories are also Katurian’s escape from the harshness of reality. His story “The

Writer and the Writer’s Brother,” which is implied to be somewhat autobiographical, explains

that Katurian’s stories became better and better the more he heard his brother screaming from the

secret room in his house. The power of writing and expression allowed Katurian to escape the

tragedy of what was happening to Michal and lie to himself for seven years about what went on

in the room.

11 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., p. 7

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Beyond freedom of expression, Katurian touches on the idea that stories can just be

stories. But, that ends up being a false belief. Though Katurian never intends for his stories to

have any worldly repercussions, they lead to the death of two children, as well as Michal and

Katurian’s execution. Before there was writing or recording of thoughts, there was storytelling. It

was the earliest form of capturing and presenting ideas and created much of what we know about

early human history. Stories have always represented something, but they were also subject to

reinterpretation. By releasing his stories into the world, Katurian set his brother up to enact the

murders. The stories of both men, in that sense, seal their fates. Katurian’s stories are what lands

him in the interrogation room and Michal’s cries of pain are what inspire the darkness of the

stories that he bases his murders off of.

Interpretation is a powerful force. Everything about storytelling, whether it’s through

song or poetry or prose or some other medium, is influence by the ideas of the storyteller. Every

word carries certain connotations with it, and often, we choose to interpret a story in a way that

we like. This may be to make ourselves better or to benefit someone else (as Johnny does when

he lies and tells Cripple Billy that the sack of rocks his parents carried was not to kill him, but to

kill themselves so Billy could receive the life insurance.) Katurian aptly explains to Michal the

necessity for a smart person to avoid letting interpretation interfere with a story:

Katurian: A man comes in to a room, says to another man, ‘Your mother’s dead.’ What

do we know? Do we know that the second man’s mother is dead?

Michal: Yes.

Katurian: No, we don’t.

Michal: No, we don’t.

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Katurian: All we know is that a man has come into a room and said to another man,

‘Your mother is dead.’ That is all we know. First rule of storytelling. ‘Don’t believe

everything you read in the papers.’12

McDonagh himself makes good use of misconception and toying with reality, as can be seen in

many of his plays. In The Cripple of Inishmaan, do audience members know that Cripple Billy

actually has tuberculosis? No. Even when he performs a monologue in which he is on his death

bed, can audience members tell if he has the disease? No. They only know that Cripple Billy is

giving a monologue in which he is on his death bed. And the monologue turns out to be just that:

a monologue from a movie. Billy doesn’t have tuberculosis (at the time)

In The Pillowman, Katurian is first prompted to give this speech because he believes that

Michal was tortured by the detective Ariel. But all that Katurian truly knows is that he heard

Michal scream and Ariel came back into the interrogation room with bloody hands. Near the end

of the story, everyone believes that the third missing child has been murdered according to the

story “The Little Jesus,” when, in fact, the girl is not dead at all.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane contains a similar misconception. After countless struggles

with her mother to be with Pato, Maureen finally kills her mother so she can go and marry him.

But all that the audience truly knows is that Maureen said she found him right before he left for

America and fixed everything between them. In reality, she never saw him again.

Each of the three plays manipulates what the audience sees and how they interpret what

they see. Sometimes, audience members are frustrated when a story takes an unexpected twist.

But this never happens in McDonagh’s pieces. The key to his “surprise” endings is that they

aren’t surprises. All of the misconceptions are made by the audience, not McDonagh. He

12 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., pp. 39-40

Newman 9

provides a series of details and situations that work perfectly together. By leaving room for

assumptions and imagination, he encourages the audience members to create a story for

themselves. The shattering of this perceived “truth” is the secret to McDonagh’s successful

“surprise” endings.

Katurian manipulates the human desire to imagine in his story “The Three Gibbet

Crossroads:”

Tupolski: (pause) ‘The Three Gibbet Crossroads.’ What are you trying to tell us in this

story?

Katurian: I’m not trying to tell you anything. It’s supposed to be just a puzzle without a

solution.

Tupolski: And what is the solution?

Katurian: (pause) There isn’t one. It’s a puzzle without a solution.

Tupolski: I think there’s a solution. But then, I’m really clever.

Katurian: Well, I mean, you’re right, the idea is you should wonder what the solution is,

but the truth is there is no solution, because there is nothing worse, is there? Than the two

things it says.13

Humans are programmed to think in certain ways. We desire predictable plot structures. We

desire safety. And so, when we are presented with a puzzle, we desire there to be a solution. But

what is life but a puzzle without a solution? Two men are arrested for murdering three children

in a totalitarian dictatorship and there is substantial incriminating evidence. How do they get out

of it? The answer is that they don’t. Both Michal and Katurian are killed because of the murders.

13 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., p.17

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Sometimes, when a boy is as deformed and unloved as Cripple Billy, there isn’t a way to make

him lovable. He will live the rest of his short life in misery and die from tuberculosis.

It is never the goal of a storyteller to give an audience what they want. When we are

satisfied, we are bored. A storyteller must do anything but give us what we want. It is through

this refusal to gratify the audience that stories transform the ordinary into the extraordinary.

Pulling the audience out of its comfort zone is the only way to make everyone satisfied at the end

of the night. Sometimes, this is comes in the form of twist ending. Sometimes, it’s doing nothing

at all. When Cripple Billy wants the truth, he is more satisfied with a lie. When we want

Katurian to find a way to live, we are more intrigued by the repercussions of his death.

As a writer, Katurian embodies many of the beliefs of McDonagh. Some of the stories

that Katurian has written are actually McDonagh’s old short stories. Above all, Katurian and

McDonagh value stories:

Katurian: They’re going to destroy everything now. They’re going to destroy us, they’re

going to destroy my stories. They’re going to destroy everything.

Michal: Well, I think it’s us we should be worrying about, Katurian, not your stories.

Katurian: Oh yeah?

Michal: Yeah. They’re just paper.

Katurian (pause) They’re just what?

Michal: They’re just paper.

Katurian thuds Michal’s head down once against the stone floor. Michal, stunned by the

idea of it rather than the pain, feels his bleeding head.

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Katurian: If they came to me right now and said, ‘We’re going to burn two out of the

three of you – you, your brother, or your stories,’ I’d have them burn you first, I’d have

them burn me second, and I’d have it be the stories they saved.14

As previously mentioned, stories are the earliest and most powerful form of maintaining human

knowledge and history. But they also represent the essence of Katurian. Particularly in such a

restricting government, his stories are his life. They are the culmination of his experiences, his

life with Michal, and the limits of his creativity. The emphasis he places on saving the stories

provides a stark contrast with the function of stories in The Cripple of Inishmaan.

For Cripple Billy, stories are not a way to live forever. The lies he tells and the news

Johnny passes along do not preserve Billy’s being. Instead, the stories provide the exact

opposite: immediate gratification. But they still represent a new freedom in his life. Billy is able

to escape Inishmaan because Johnny tells him about the American director. He is able to enjoy

the last few months of his life because Johnny lied to him about his parents’ death. The stories

allow Billy to enjoy his short life, but lose all meaning once he is dead.

Katurian’s stories, on the other hand, are his shot at eternal life. The moment he finds out

that Michal killed the children, he knows that there is no escape. He is going to die and the only

way he has a chance of carrying on his tale is to have his stories survived. He values his stories

so much that he loses interest in his own life:

Katurian: I killed my parents.

14 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., p. 53

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Ariel: The only killing we can definitely pin on you is the killing of your brother. In light

of the extenuating circumstances, I doubt it highly that you would be executed for it. I

would therefore think very carefully before admitting to the killing of…

Katurian: I killed my parents. (Pause.) I killed my parents.15

The reasoning behind this apparent madness is that, if Katurian is killed, his stories will be sealed

away in his case file for 50 years. Out of his 400 or so stories, only one was ever published, and

so he willingly dies in hopes of his stories carrying on his legacy.

The settings, or lack thereof, in McDonagh’s plays, help to emphasize the importance of

human interaction. Keeping the settings simple allows for the focus of the plays to remain on the

characters and the stories they have to tell.

If Inishmaan was as buzzing a place as New York City, then Cripple Billy would have no

trouble leaving and Johnny would be out of work. But it is a small, boring island where even a

neighborhood goose and cat getting into a fight is big news. The stories that Billy and Johnny

create bring life to the lifeless area. The Beauty Queen of Leenane takes place in a similarly

boring place of Ireland. Many exciting events occur in England and America, but the audience

only ever sees what happens at Maureen’s house. Nevertheless, these events affect Maureen and

Mag and generate a compelling story in their own regard.

The entirety of The Pililowman takes place inside the police station and, though any

country could theoretically fall under a totalitarian rule, McDonagh chooses not to give the place

a name. The story of two men who are arrested becomes interesting not because of where they

are arrested, but because of the story that gets them arrested and the stories that result.

15 McDonagh, Martin. The Pillowman. London: Faber and Faber, 2003. Print., p. 98

Newman 13

Though film and theater are very different mediums, McDonagh makes a seamless

transition from works like The Pillowman and The Cripple of Inishmaan to his movie In Bruges.

There are certain aspects of a movie that are, unarguably, going to be different from a staged

show. The cast is much larger than four people and the setting doesn’t have to be limited to a

single room. There is also the potential for camera tricks and special effects that are difficult or

impossible to accomplish on stage. That being said, McDonagh stays pretty grounded with his

use of film.

The setting of In Bruges is the city of Bruges, Belgium. The city contains more open air

and space than one might find on stage, but it manages to remain constricting. The two main

characters, Ray and Ken, are forced to stay there for two weeks, and Ray’s disdain for its

architecture and beauty makes it feel even smaller. From the beginning, there is tension between

the two of them. It exists on a surface level, with Ken loving Bruges and Ray hating it, but it also

functions on a deeper level. Ray yearns to spread his wings and fly free. He wouldn’t mind

Bruges if it weren’t for the fact that he can’t be anywhere else. Ken, on the other hand, is much

more satisfied staying on the down low. He and Ray are in Bruges because Ray murdered a

child, so Ken would rather take safety over adventure.

One particular scene that exemplifies this contrast is about halfway into the movie. Ken

has been ordered by their boss, Harry, to kill Ray. He doesn’t want to do it, but finds a gun and

follows Ray to a park. Ray, on the other hand, is wrought with guilt and plans on taking his own

life. As Ken raises his gun to shoot Ray, he sees Ray’s gun and yells at him to stop. Ray, as well

as the audience, is confused as to why Ken didn’t just let Ray do the job for himself. The

reasoning behind it is that each man’s gun had a different motive behind it. Ray was using the

suicide as a way of freeing himself from his guilt. Ken wanted to kill Ray to secure his own

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freedom. The conflicting reasons to kill Ray prevented either from being properly executed. As

the two discuss the incident, Ken gives in and tells Ray to leave. He sides against safety and both

men reach a subconscious agreement to let Ray be free.

The essence of storytelling is also prevalent in the movie, but in a different way than

McDonagh incorporates it into his plays. On stage, the focus is primarily on the characters and

the text. The strength of the stories and the lies that the characters tell grow from their

interactions and conversations. But in the case of In Bruges, the story is not presented with

words, but with sights, sounds, and the essence of the city itself. Bruges is the story. When Harry

explains why he sent Ken and Ray there only to have Ray killed, he says it is because Bruges is

“a fairytale town.” Bruges is the story of Ken’s security, Ray’s oppression, and the eventual

escape for both of them.

At the very end of the movie, Ray aptly describes the sentiments of not only himself, but

of Katurian and Billy and all of McDonagh’s characters:

At least in prison, and at least in death, you know, I wouldn’t be in fuckin’ Bruges. But

then, like a flash, it hit me, and I realized, fuck man, maybe that’s what hell is. The entire

rest of eternity spent in fuckin’ Bruges. And I really really hoped I wouldn’t die.16

But in this case, Bruges isn’t just Bruges. It represents all of these characters’ places and

moments of oppression. It is Bruges, it is a police interrogation room, it is the island of

Inishmaan. Ending up dead, as is the case for Billy and Katurian, is better than being oppressed

for their whole life.

16 In Bruges. Dir. Martin McDonagh. Screenplay by Martin McDonagh. Perf. Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. Focus Features, 2008. DVD.

Newman 15

William Shakespeare broke down this struggle into a black and white concept: to be, or

not to be. To live, or not to live. But this concept of living involves more than just a pulse and a

functioning body. It is about going through the human experience. Suffering through trials and

tribulations rather than hiding in the background. You can watch life pass by, or live it. You can

listen to stories, or you can tell them.