The Pillowman probes toxic masculinity

In the play, director Chong Tze Chien and his all-male cast will dive deep into issues such as anger and violence

- Clement Yong

Netflix's four-part limited series Adolescence has got viewers talking about its interrogation scene that veers from the tender to the hurling of a chair.

Closer to home, another intense interrogation will be enacted on stage, in director Chong Tze Chien's staging of The Pillowman.

The classic 2003 psychological thriller by British-Irish playwright Martin McDonagh, about an author and his brother being questioned for the gruesome stories the former writes, will be presented by theatre company Sight Lines at the KC Arts Centre from May 15 to 24.

Chong, 49, gives the taut whodunnit an original interpretation with an all-male cast of six. Instead of censorship and authority, and the thin line between truth and fiction, he sets his sights on one of modern society's biggest conundrums - masculinity.

Chong, who has been appointed the next Singapore International Festival of Arts festival director, says: "There's a lot of violence in the way that men were brought up, in the way that we were conditioned. I'm not sure if that was McDonagh's earliest intentions (in the portrayal of the two brothers), but from a narrative standpoint, there could be an evil twin in everyone's story. What if it were yourself?"

In his telling, the author and his brother - who are both accused of the murder of children - become the facets of not just a creative, but also any man in the post-#MeToo era.