The Pillowman

Martin McDonagh is a British Irish playwright and filmmaker known for his absurdist black humor. He drew inspiration for The Pillowman from his own personal affinity for fairytales and his realization that many children’s stories have subtly dark undertones. The play is about two brothers, Katurian and Michal, who are under investigation for a series of child murders that bear an uncanny resemblance to some of Katurian’s fictional stories.

The Pillowman debuted its first public reading in London in 1995 and its first stage performance at the Royal National Theatre in London on November 13, 2003. In 2004, it won the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play, the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best New Foreign Play, and two Tony Awards for production. It later opened on Broadway in April 2005. The Pillowman is McDonagh’s first play not set in Ireland. It is preceded by his controversial but critically acclaimed play The Lieutenant of Inishmore (2001), which received a nomination for a Tony Award for Best Play. In addition to several plays, McDonagh is the writer and director behind the films In Bruges (2008), Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017), and The Banshees of Inisherin (2022). Like much of McDonagh’s work, The Pillowman weaves comedy and horror to pose difficult questions about society and art.

This guide references the 2003 edition published by Dramatists Play Service Inc.

Content Warning: The source material and guide feature depictions of murder (including child victims), suicide, child abuse (including sexual abuse), ableism, religious and racial discrimination, graphic violence (including police brutality), substance abuse, mental illness, and offensive language (including profanity).

Plot Summary

The play opens in a police interrogation room, where detectives Ariel and Tupolski sit across from Katurian. Katurian introduces himself to the detectives and reassures them that he doesn’t hold any anti-police or anti-state opinion. Angered, Ariel immediately threatens to hit Katurian, who is baffled. Tupolski, playing the part of the “good cop” at this point alongside Ariel’s “bad cop” persona, is a little more friendly to Katurian. The officers ask Katurian why he thinks he has been brought in for questioning, but Katurian doesn’t know. The three of them banter tensely for a while. Katurian worries that the officers suspect him of writing political propaganda. Katurian writes fictional stories, but he insists that he never uses his writing to send any messages—he simply enjoys writing stories.

Ariel and Tupolski ask Katurian about a particular story he wrote in which a little girl carves figurines out of apples. The apple figurines turn out to have razors inside, and both the girl and her dad die after eating them. Ariel leaves the room, saying he’s going to speak to Michal, Katurian’s brother. This upsets Katurian greatly, as Michal is intellectually disabled, and Katurian doesn’t want him to get scared or hurt.

While Ariel is gone, Tupolski questions Katurian as to why all his stories revolve around children being murdered. Katurian reads aloud one of his stories, which is about a prisoner who has committed a crime worse than rape or murder but can’t remember what the crime was. Katurian reads another of his stories, which ends up being a darkly twisted version of a classic kid’s tale—in this version, a little boy ends up getting his toes chopped off. While Tupolski and Katurian speak, they hear Michal screaming from the other room, which worries Katurian. Ariel returns with a bloodied fist. Katurian becomes enraged, demanding to see his brother. Ariel and Tupolski show Katurian a box containing five severed children’s toes, and Katurian finally begins to understand that he and Michal are being accused of murder. Two children’s bodies have recently been found, and a third one is missing. Ariel says that Michal just admitted to the crime, but Katurian doesn’t believe him.

Katurian narrates his semiautobiographical story, “The Writer and the Writer’s Brother.” In the story, a little boy (Katurian) lives with his loving parents, who give him everything he wants. They encourage him to be creative, and Katurian takes an interest in writing. When he turns seven years old, he begins to have recurring nightmares in which he hears sounds like electrical drills and screams. He asks his parents about the sounds, but they reassure him that he just has a big imagination. The nightmares go on for years, and Katurian’s writing improves, though his stories get darker and more twisted.

One day, after finding his parents in the other bedroom with drills and fake blood, Katurian realizes that they had been playing a prank on him all this time. They were pretending to make those torturous sounds every night to inspire Katurian’s creativity. The family moves to a new house, and years after that, Katurian returns to the old one to look around. In the other bedroom, he finds the corpse of a boy. It turns out that his parents really had been torturing someone all those years. The body is holding a paper with a story written on it, and it’s the best story Katurian has ever read. He burns it and never mentions it again.

At the end, Katurian notes that the only fictional part of the story is the very end. When he returned to his old house, he found Michal alive, and that night, Katurian smothered his parents to death with a pillow.

In the present, Ariel and Tupolski torture Katurian while Michal waits alone in the other room. Ariel eventually throws Katurian in with Michal, and the brothers are alone together. Katurian tells Michal his story called “The Pillowman,” which is about a huge man made of pillows who searches for the people who are most miserable, then goes back in time to find the same people as children and convince them to die by suicide so as to avoid further suffering.

After the story, Michal reveals that he really did commit the murders they are being accused of. Katurian is shocked and disgusted. Michal explains that he acted out some of Katurian’s stories about children being murdered. He says that the last one he acted out was based on the story “The Little Jesus.” Katurian is beside himself with anger and grief, crying and screaming at Michal. Eventually they both calm down, and Michal lies down to nap. Once he’s asleep, Katurian tells Michal he forgives him, and, through tears, smothers him to death with a pillow. He calls out to the detectives that he agrees to confess to six murders, but only on the condition that they save his stories in his file. Katurian narrates “The Little Jesus.” It is a particularly gruesome story about a child who is tortured and eventually buried alive.

In his official confession, Katurian confesses to killing Michal, their parents, and three children. He draws a map to where his parents’ bodies are, which he thinks is where Michal buried the third child. Ariel screams at Katurian in outrage, explaining that he has a particular hatred for child abusers. Tupolski says that this is because Ariel’s father sexually abused him as a child. Ariel eventually killed his father in self-defense. As the officers are hooking up Katurian to a machine to torture him, they realize that since the girl in “The Little Jesus” was buried alive, the missing child might still be living. Ariel goes to look for her. While Ariel is gone, Tupolski reveals that he lost his son in a fishing accident.

Later, Ariel returns with the girl. To everyone’s shock, she is happy and healthy. Katurian realizes that Michal actually acted out a different story—a completely innocuous one about a green pig on a farm. The officers now realize that Katurian was faking the confession. Ariel no longer wants to execute Katurian, but Tupolski insists on it because Katurian lied to them. Tupolski, upset with how the investigation turned out, tells Katurian that he will count to 10 out loud before he shoots him, but he pulls the trigger after just a few seconds. Tupolski leaves the room and orders Ariel to burn all Katurian’s stories, but Ariel saves them.