The Pillowman

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(Damn long story ahead.)

Yay it was great! Watched it on Tuesday 20 Nov 2007. Very interesting and exciting. I wouldn't have minded watching it again. I even checked the availability of tickets but everything was sold out already. So sad..

It wasn't action-packed but it was about a writer whose (rather perverse) stories were acted out in murders of 2 children and 1 girl was missing so many stories were told. I like stories. Anyway, the writer is in custody and 2 detectives are interrogating him. We find out the writer's name is Katurian Katurian Katurian. So funny. Haha.. "My parents were funny people." He has an older brother who is mentally unstable and was supposedly being interrogated "next door". =P So he talks about 2 of his stories which were acted out in the murders.

Can't really remember exactly now. Senile liao.. Anyway, there once was a little girl who was ill-treated by her father. Erm, can't really remember the parts in the middle but it was a short story. The end involved small apples, razors and small "people" who went down the father's throat and cut up his insides. I think. =P Same thing happened to the girl too, but I don't remember why. In the murder, an apple with razors was forced down a little girl's throat.

Second story is one of my favourites. There was a very poor boy who was bullied and despised by the other children because of his poverty but he remained kind and cheerful. One day he was sitting by the river when he heard a carriage coming. (Picture of a dark-looking man in cloak projected on stage, stories in comic book style.) The boy offered the man a sandwich that was meant to be his supper. The man sat beside him quietly and shared the sandwich with the boy. They talked while eating. After the meal the boy saw several dirty empty cages of animals and asked him what animals had been in there. (Don't remember what he said, but anyway,) the man thanked him and said, because you've been so kind to offer me part of your already meagre meal, I will give you a gift. You might not understand now but in time, you will thank me. He told him to close his eyes and the boy did. The man then took out a shiny knife and swiftly chopped off the boy's toes. The boy was stunned but did not scream. He just sat there and stared at his severed toes and foot as the man rode away. And that was the story of the crippled boy of Hamlin.

Did you get it? The man was Pied Piper and the boy was the crippled little boy who couldn't catch up with the other children and was thus spared. Cool..

Afterwards when the writer was put in the same cell as his mentally unstable brother, the brother admited to the murders. And he was marvelling at how the boy had indeed not made any noise when he chopped off his toes. "He just sat there and slowly turned blue!" Goodness.



The Writer and the Writer's Brother.

There once was a little boy whose parents showered him with love. They gave him books to read etc etc.. and the boy started writing very good stories, about little pigs etc etc.. The first part of the parents' experiment had worked.

The room beside the boy's bedroom had always been locked and the boy never really paid much attention to it. One night, when the boy was 7 years old, he started hearing drilling noises, hammering etc and a muffled screaming of a little child. The boy had a terrifying sleepless night and when morning came, he asked his mother what the noises were. His mother told him that it was all his vivid imagination. He asked his mother if all little boys heard such noises at night and his mother told him that only the most gifted little boys do. So the boy was pacified and continued to hear such noises every night. And the boy's stories got darker and darker.

When the boy was 14, he won a prestigious writing award. One day at home, he saw a paper slipped out from the locked room. It read, for seven years, mum and dad have been torturing me every night. You don't write about little pigs any more, do you? Sign, your brother. And the note was written in blood. The writer knocked down the door to the locked room and saw his parents sitting on a bed, smiling, and a jar of pig's blood beside the bed. His father made drilling noises and his mother made muffled screaming like a child's. The second part of his parents' experiment had worked too.

The boy grew up and left home. After he published his first story, he decided to visit his childhood home. His room was exactly the same, he remembered his toys and books. Then he went to the room where he remembered how his parents had made horrifying noises every night for seven years to inspire him. But on the bed, under the blanket, he found a skeleton of a boy, neglected for several years. In his hand was a story written in blood. The boy read the story and the story was better than anything he had ever written. He burnt the story.

And then I got lost. Oops. I hate that I'm so easily distracted.. Anyway after that part, which was an unpublished story that he wrote, was what actually happened.

When the boy was 14, he broke open the lock and went into the room and found his brother. Disgusted with his parents, he smothered them with a pillow.


Back in the cell, the mentally unstable brother asked the writer to tell him stories to distract him from his itching butt. (Ha..) The brother's favourite story was The Green Pig.

The Green Pig was always teased by the other normal pink pigs but he was happy to be peculiar. However, the other pigs and the farmers were very annoyed with him being so strange. He was bright green, sort of like neon green. One day, the farmers could take it no more and forced the Green Pig into a bucket of paint in the colour of normal pink pigs. The paint was a special paint that could not be washed off and could not be painted over. The poor Green Pig squealed and wailed and prayed to God to help him, that he was happy to be just a little peculiar. Finally the ordeal was over and the farmers were happy with the Green Pig being pink and normal. The other pigs laughed at him. The Green Pig, who was now pink, was very sad and couldn't figure out why God did not save him.

That night, as all the pigs slept in the field, the sky rained. But the sky rained green paint and it was special paint. It could not be washed off and could not be painted over. When morning came, the pigs were horrified to see that they were now green. Except the Green Pig who was now pink because he was painted in special paint that could not be washed off and could not be painted over. The Green Pig, now pink, smiled and thanked God that he was still peculiar.




Ok, last story. The Pillowman. The Pillowman was made of pillows. He was big and soft, and his head was a big circular pillow. The Pillowman had a very important job. When children are upset about life, the Pillowman goes to them and tells them how to commit suicide and make it look like an accident. Ok, this part is a little fuzzy to me. But anyway the Pillowman also tells them about their sad lives ahead of them so they do want to end it and so the Pillowman helps them.

But there was this happy little girl that refused to believe the Pillowman who told her about her sad life. The Pillowman tried to convince her but she was too happy to listen.

One night, when the little girl's mother was not home, a man came into her room. She pleaded with him to stop. But the man came every time her mother was not home. When the girl was 21, she asked the Pillowman, why didn't you try harder to convince me? I tried, but you were too happy. I was never happy. And she turned on the gas in the kitchen.

Actually, there's another story that Adrian Pang's character told. It's not quite relevant but it's very funny, the way he told it. It's quite an intriguing story.

Oh there's one more story. There was one child who was missing, right? When the writer found out his brother was responsible, he smothered him in his sleep to spare him the terror of execution and confessed to all the murders in return for the cops' promise to keep his stories will his case file, to be released 50 years later. The brother said he had acted out the story of The Little Jesus on the missing child.

Basically it's this little girl who insists that she's Jesus and got on the nerves of her foster parents and let her go through what Jesus did - crown of thorns, crucifixion, and buried alive in a coffin. Each time the foster parents asked if she still wanted to be Jesus, she said, yes, I do. Before they put her in the coffin, they asked again and she said, no, because I fucking AM Jesus! Haha.. But on the third day in the coffin, a man walked past her buried coffin and did not hear her scratching.

The brother had told him he buried the girl at the wishing well where he had buried their parents. When the found the missing child, who was mute, she was covered in green paint and was with some piglets in the well. Ha.. But the writer was still sentenced to death for the murders of his parents even though they figured out he didn't kill those children.


At the end of the play, when the writer was shot, he added a "footnote" to his story:

On the night before his parents were to torture him for seven years, a boy was visited by the Pillowman who told him what was going to happen - the torture, the murders, his death in the cell. The boy thought about it and said, if my parents did not torture me, my brother would not be able to write those stories, would he? I think I'll really enjoy my brother's stories. And he decided to stay.