Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman and the Postmodern Gothic

Abstract

Martin McDonagh’s The Pillowman (2003) introduces his audiences to a new nightmarish phase in his work, using archetypal Gothic fairy tales to disturb and unsettle and to tap into a more unnerving depiction of violence and extremes of the theatrical grotesque. This chapter seeks to explore the discomforting effect of the ‘little stories’ within the play’s narrative from a postmodern perspective. In exploring the horror of these ‘little stories’, McDonagh is playfully exposing a postmodern preoccupation with fractured narrative as well as providing the audience with a renewed sense of power in the theatrical moment, whereby their engagement with and fear of the telling and enacting of ‘little’ stories’ becomes the focus of the play’s Gothic engagement.