Working Title: In Bruges, In Purgatory, In The Pillowman

This Week Will Leschber will writes in only violence and expletives…

Sometimes you just need the dark. Growing up American tinges lives with a cutting, optimistic edge. This is not a value judgment. This is not a universal truism. And this is hardly a new revelation. Plenty of my friends would not describe themselves as optimistic yet there is a undercurrent of Manifest Destiny that informs the fabric of who we are. We have come to expect happy endings. We see ourselves as the good guys and believe that to be true. What strikes me these days is not this aspect of our collective identity but moreso the way it pervades our outlook. Specifically, this train of thought is a recognition of a tug that often pulls on the way we creatively tell stories or expect stories to be told. When we’ve had our fill of comfort and familiarity, an abrasive and unexpected story may be just what is required.

A story that uproots blind optimism can be supremely refreshing. Martin McDonagh, the acclaimed Irish playwright seems like a tonic to cure stories with bows and happy endings. Yet, even with his happy ending averted…or inverted, McDonagh retains a moral optimism in all of his vulgar and violent tales. This may simply come down to the characters finally lying in the beds that they’ve made.

(l-r.) Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell star in Martin McDonagh’s IN BRUGES, a Focus Features release.

Now, I’m more familiar with his film work and yet I’ve been told I’ve been really missing out by not experiencing his distinct voice in Theatre. Well if you are like me and need to bath in the absurdly, hilarious darkness of a Martin McDonagh play, now’s your chance. On June 12th, The Breadbox, a company in residence at the EXIT Theatre, opens The Pillowman directed by Ariel Craft. To wet your whistle for a proper cinematic and theater pairing, I reached out to Justin Gillman who is one of the lead actors in this new production.

Justin had this to say: “There are very few individuals in cinema who can match Martin McDonagh’s sickly beautiful and uncomfortably hilarious world-view, that is so brilliantly on display in his masterpiece, “The Pillowman.” I see glimpses of it in the works of Quentin Tarantino and the Coen Brothers. But, if you really want an idea of what you’re in for when you come see McDonagh’s play, look no further than his own recent writing/directing effort, 2008’s Oscar nominee for Best Original Screenplay, “In Bruges,” starring Colin Farrell and Brendan Gleeson. The film, about two Irish hitmen in hiding, has the same signature mixture of horror and hilarity that makes “The Pillowman” so grueling yet so captivating.”

I can’t speak for The Pillowman, which I’m dying to see, but I can say that In Bruges is such a refreshing knockout-punch of obscenity, potent violence, serenely boring beauty, unexpected hilarity and genuine feeling. How McDonagh weaves such a balanced hypnotic net with such deranged and estranged parts, I’ll never know. But I do know that I love this film. Mcdonagh’s second film effort, Seven Psychopaths, while not quite as fully realize as In Bruges is still a captivating treatise on violence and the way we spin our lives into the stories we tell. I hear all these threads twist and turn within The Pillowman. Even with it’s rippling tragic core, In Bruges seems to tie up exactly as it should. It’s the definition of dark and satisfying.

Working Title: Dark Comedy and Skeletons!

This week Will Leschber takes a walk on the dark side of comedy.

As you may have noticed, here at Theater Pub, September is a month of comedy!

Looking for live comedy? Check out great suggestions by Allison Page.

Looking to laugh at someone else’s life? Check out Claire Rice’s “Comedy of Personal Errors.”

But if you are looking for something a little on the darker side of comedy, read on. Sad clowns are my favorite. It’s possibly more accurate to say that there’s something about the sad clown juxtaposition that has a greater draw and hits closer to home. The sound of sad clowns and dark comedy seems to me a resonating indigo bell. Maybe it comes down to the fusion of two spectrums of theater, or life in general for that matter. Comedy, tragedy, light and dark all at once. That is closer to my experience.

We get everything all at once and have to juggle the mirth and the struggle simultaneously. Laughing around a hospital bed as you share old stories about a fading friend. Celebrating an anniversary while a close friend disintegrates towards divorce. Proudly graduating and then being forced to recon with uncertain futures. Moving away from home. Leaving a secure, steady job that you hate. Marveling at a beautiful sunset with no one to share it with. Experience is layered. Great comedy deals with bigger things than just getting a laugh. The best dark comedies may have an easier time straddling line because we give them room to grow beyond the mere joke. Fight Club, Fargo, Barton Fink, In Bruges, Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas, Death to Smoochy, American Psycho… All these films are concerned with a layer of topics and still remain brazenly funny. They wrestle with Identity, finding your place in the world, materialism, the cost of creativity, definitions of success, commercialism, the meaning of repentance and also unconventional humor.

One of the best dark comedies of 2014 is in theaters now. The Skeleton Twins stars Kristen Wiig and Bill Hader as troubled siblings who reconnect after a ten-year estrangement when one of them attempts suicide. Sounds dark, right? Well, it is. Darker than I expected after hearing the buzz and seeing the trailer. But the film also contains some of the funniest scenes of the year. I laughed so hard and so long at a sequence in which Hader’s character Milo attempts to cheer up his sister by lip-syncing Starship’s “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now.” It may be the funniest 5 minutes of film this year. This is bookended with the lives of these characters falling apart. It’s a marvel of balancing tone. Moreover, the two lead performers are the what allow this film to elevate to a higher level. We seen comedic actors given the chance to do dramatic work before and when its done as well as this you should pay attention.