The Pillowman - Duke of York's

It's Monday now

Does any first preview ever start smoothly in the west end or national theatre? It always seems to be cancelled for the first couple.

I didn’t realise that the 10th had been cancelled!

Problems with the set on this first preview. First stop after 30 seconds because the room in which the action takes place failed to move to the front of the stage.

Now on another stop because the room failed to retract at the end of the scene.

Could be a long night...

What a night! Bravo to the cast for getting through this. Curtain call was eventually at 22:51 and was met with a partial ovation and I think much relief all round.

I loved this play when I saw Paul Kerryson's take on it in the Leicester Curve Studio in 2009. That version felt one step removed from reality, which helped with the initial dystopian, Kafka-esque vibe, before there is a gear-change to something even darker. Here, everyone is a lot more naturalistic, as are the sets, and that doesn't quite gel so well.

Paul Kaye is the stand-out performance as bad cop Ariel. He is sensational. Steve Pemberton is good as his partner Tupolski, but I struggled to shake off in my mind all of his brilliant tv characters, both the grotesque and the comic. I would have preferred an actor with whom I was not so familiar.

Lily Allen as the gender-switched Katurian Katurian Katurian does not work for me. I didn't enjoy her acting style in 2:22 and my opinion was not changed. I was too aware of her method rather than the process being transparent. Her speaking style seems to channel Claudia Winkleman, and that's not a good thing.

I am not sure if we saw the full effect of the intended lighting design, or if there were issues. What we had was only rarely inventive/creative, and I think the play needs more. The sound design was similarly lacking.

All of the problems with the set will no doubt be sorted, and the performances will evolve during previews. In spite of my misgivings, writer McDonagh supplies much to enjoy, and enjoy it I did.

Four stars.

Acts 1 & 2: 19:35-19:36, 19:48-20:21, 20:28-20:38, 20:42-21:31 (three stops because of sets failing to move)
Act 3: 21:55-22:51

Ouch. This was bad.

Partly due to a lack of momentum from failing set changes (every set change in act 1 caused a show stop including the initial transition into scene 1). But also due to the vacuum that is Lily Allen’s performance at the centre, sucking all the humour and energy from the production.

Never has totalitarian dystopia felt more soporific. Where was the threat? Where was the tension? Where was the release in laughter? The audience sat mainly in stony silence with only the odd line truly getting a laugh. The warnings of “darkly comic depictions of violence” by the doors seemed well wide of the mark.

And without the comedy, the racist, ablist, anti-Semitic language in the mouths of the characters (whom we know we’re meant to find horrific but funny, but aren’t landing the funny) start to feel very very dated. In a kind of “was that really what we thought was funny 20 years ago?” kind of way.

I’m not saying it’s not at least partially salvageable. I think Paul Kaye and Steve Pemberton will settle into the rhythm and find more humour, and the more off-colour stuff will land as comedically outrageous rather than just punching down. And I liked Matthew Tennyson at first as a fresh blast of new energy but my god that scene dragged on and on (to be fair we had been in our seats for over two hours without a break by the end of it!).

The staging of the first of the big story sections is also terrible and confusing but maybe that will be worked on. And I’m sure they’ll iron out the tech issues which may help with the pacing (and I just hope they speed up the whole thing a bit). But there’s no getting away from the fact that Lily Allen is not up to a role of this size or centrality.

A lot of soul-searching and wound-licking from the production team tomorrow I imagine.

This is disappointing to hear. I must admit that my heart sank when they announced that Lily Allen had taken over the role of Katurian from Aaron Taylor Johnson. It just seemed like a wacky casting decision but I had faith in the creative team which sounds like it may have been misplaced. I'm going at the end of August so hopefully she'll have grown into it by then.

This is so disappointing. This play was extraordinary at the National years ago.

I just couldn't work out where it had left to go. But yes, it certainly picked up a bit after the interval and felt less claustrophobic too.

Not yet.

I just used the link from last week's email. It's not clear, but doesn't seem they are resending it every week unless you sign up every week.

I'm glad others have found Lily Allen as disappointing as I did, I wondered if I was necessarily harsh on her performance, it's always tempting to hate on a celebrity nudging into acting. I hated 2:22 and she was just one cog in that, in this she's the real centrepiece and she just... lacks. Her whole performance is very flat, you don't really build up any sympathy for her, you don't really care about her, she's not that funny.

I wonder what happened behind the scenes that led to her casting, given it was a male in the role previously. Is it that the director had a Covid-related brainwave and suddenly saw Katurian as a female and searched for the perfect vessel for that idea and Lily Allen provided that in an audition? Or is it that when searching about for a new celebrity cast member when Aaron Taylor Johnson dropped out in the reschedule Lily Allen's agent was the most persuasive? She isn't right for the role, her casting was a mistake, and to be honest I think she should find a different avenue for her creative juices than theatre acting.