When Martin McDonagh's Tony-nominated play The Pillowman opened on Broadway last year, the New York Times critic Ben Brantley compared its moments of shock to the shower scene in Psycho. McDonagh wraps his sardonic character study in a ghastly child torture and murder investigation. Instead of CSI-style ABC forensics The Pillowman blurs fantasy and reality during the interrogation of the two prime suspects. Katurian, a writer whose published stories contain lurid child killings, is arrested in a fictional totalitarian country, as is his mentally impaired brother Michal. Along with the third degree, the writer's stories are illustrated within the framework of the play.

Whether the detectives rubber-hose the themes of artistic obsession versus artistic freedom will be up to director Jiri Zizka. "It's about our need to tell stories onstage," Zizka says, "a twisted comedy with dark undertones."

Broadway actors Lewis Standlen (Nathan Lane's successor in The Producers), Saxon Palmer and Michael Pemberton lead the cast with Philadelphian Peter Pryor. McDonagh, a playwright and storyteller in the Irish tradition, has had four plays running on London's West End at once, and won a Drama Desk Award on Broadway for The Beauty Queen of Leenane. The Wilma introduced his work to Philadelphia audiences six years ago with a production of The Cripple of Inishmaan.