If the newly formed, Fort Lauderdale-based theatre company Infinite Abysshadn’t established itself as a go-to-venue with its first three productions, there
should be no question of its stature now.
Infinite Abyss’ productions up until now – housed in the confines of the defunct Sol Theatre on Flagler Drive, restored under the Empire Stage moniker – have been niche works, playing to specific, if overlapping audiences: LGBT crowds, camp crowds, horror-comedy crowds. Its latest production is the theater’s first choice that fits well within the confines of mainstream, Broadway-level theatre: Martin McDonagh’s “The Pillowman,” a riveting dark comedy that won two Tony Awards in 2004. It’s an ambitious, two-and-a-half hour piece of stagecraft, brilliant and dense on the page and, in the hands of Infinite Abyss’ director, Jeffrey Holmes, just as terrific in this modest, confined space.
Scott Douglas Wilson plays Katurian K. Katurian (that’s not a typo – the character’s parents “were funny people,” he says), a writer of morbid, mostly unpublished fiction stories who is rounded up by a pair of thuggish police officers (Jim Gibbons and Dominick Daniel) in an unnamed totalitarian state. Their beef with the talented but commercially unsuccessful writer? Apparently, a series of child murders around town mirror the killings in Katurian’s ghastly fables- and they think the mild-mannered writer is the cause.
So begins a man’s descent, into a contemporary hell of torture and interrogations, and into his own disturbing past and that of his cognitively impaired brother Michael (Todd Bruno), which shaped both men’s troubled lives.
South Florida theatergoers may remember this play when GableStage mounted a multiple Carbonell-winning production in its 2005-2006 season. Having seen neither this production nor the Ground Up and Rising version presented later, I have no comparison point to judge the quality and accuracy of this Infinite Abyss interpretation. But I imagine that the spartan, claustrophobic, two-room set adds while it subtracts, because it makes the sense of inescapability that much bleaker.
Wilson is an authentic, emotionally liberated leading man, oozing confusion, then anger, then helplessness at the predicament he has found himself in. As the police detective and his hotheaded partner, Gibbons and Daniel both deserve credit for adding depth to their archetypes, extricating these men from roles that could have felt cliched. And Todd Bruno is a likeable Michael, though he is the cast’s weakest link, occasionally appearing to communicate at a higher level than his slow-witted character would.
“The Pillowman” is a complex work about internal and external stimuli, about the limits of free speech, about the effects of life on art and vice versa. To reveal any more of the specifics would be to spoil a drama that thrives on discoveries. Much of the script is taken up by Katurian narrating his various and sundry tales. As audience members, we listen to the writer’s horror stories with the rapturous attention of primitive men gathered around crackling campfires in the dead of night. Just as films like “Super 8” inspire their audiences to pick up video cameras, “The Pillowman” awakens the writer in all of us, invigorating our creative juices by bringing stories back to their purest nature- that of oral tradition.
“The Pillowman” is at Empire Stage, 1140 N. Flagler Drive, Fort Lauderdale, through July 30. Tickets are $25. Call 954/678-1496 or www.infinite-abyss.com.
