Grim tale well-told

DURHAM -- Martin McDonagh, head of the class of Irish playwrights who emerged in the '90s, wowed the theatrical world with his first play, "The Beauty Queen of Leenane." Following with "A Skull in Connemara" and "The Lonesome West," McDonagh established himself as a major voice likened to Harold Pinter and David Mamet.

Like John Millington Synge a century before him, McDonagh delved into the grimly violent world of Irish families with a singular use of language and dark humor. In "The Pillowman, McDonaugh leaves Ireland for an unnamed totalitarian country, but his signature talents are still intact, now employed in a deeper, more meaningful way with multiple layers and constant surprises.

Manbites Dog Theater Company realizes these depths with an intriguing production that marks the play's Triangle premiere.

On the surface, "The Pillowman" is about Katurian, a writer being interrogated by police because his stories mirror recent child murders. A policeman and a detective threaten and torture him, hoping he'll confess.

When Katurian defends himself as merely a creator of dark, disturbing stories, his interrogators haul in his mentally disabled brother, Michal, forcing Katurian to hear Michal's tortured screams in the next room. After Katurian tells a grisly story about their sadistic parents, and after he is allowed to talk to Michal, the audience learns conflicting information about the brothers' lives and the murders.

McDonagh continues to confound the viewer's notions with further contradictions and shocking developments. Along the way, he comments on the nature of the creative process, the power of literature, the strange bonds of family and the harsh realities of life. He understands the mesmerizing sway of storytelling, structuring his work as a cross between Grimm's Fairy Tales and Kafka's "The Trial."

The play is filled with gallows humor, and director Kevin Ewert pushes his cast to extract every chortle. The effort works well enough, especially with Ewert's physical staging and the speedy, often overlapping dialogue in the nearly three-hour production.

Ewert de-emphasizes the play's darker aspects and its reality, thereby diminishing their emotional impact. Jay O'Berski, who exhibits astonishing stamina and range as Katurian, is allowed to play more for each moment (sometimes hilarious, sometimes harrowing) rather than for an integrated character. This is especially damaging in his tender scene with Michal, as well as in sustaining Katurian's terror under investigation.

Lucius Robinson is immensely likable and funny as Michal, but he lacks the childlike wonder and naivete to make his character's fate truly devastating. Jeffrey Scott Detwiler plays policeman Ariel too aggressively as the "bad cop" stereotype, and Ewert seems to ignore the implied co-dependency of Ariel and detective Tupolski. Gregor McElvogue's quietly maniacal Tupolski is all of a piece, incorporating whatever inanity the script hands him into his established persona.

The play's subject matter will be too raw and gut-wrenching for some, and the expletive count is high. But this gripping piece is a whirlwind ride that avid theatergoers will want to experience.