It's always easy to blame films and computer games for the latest shocking murder, but have you ever wondered what would happen if people started acting out fairy tales?

The Loft's latest production might go some way to answering that. In The Pillowman, Katurian Katurian Katurian is a writer in a totalitarian state whose disturbing fables bury layers of meaning beneath bleak storylines.

He is arrested when a series of child murders mirror his gruesome tales, and his brain-damaged brother Michal is also brought in for questioning (and torture). Then the audience learns there is a dark secret in the boys' childhood.

Like Katurian's stories, the play moves from parable-like simplicity to knowing references to cop-show cliches.

Mixing a simple set with artful film and slick scene changes, director Gordon Vallins brings out the best in the award-winning play.

David Pinner makes both Katurian's vanity and servility apparent and an easy target for police officers Tupolski and Ariel. Kenny Robinson makes Ariel a believable character and Bob Harper mixes comedy with understated threat as his senior Tupolski.

There are minor flaws. It may be the script, but in places Tupolski drifts close to Sweeney-esque stereotype and Michael Barker's too-articulate Michal is more diabolic alter-ego than straight simpleton.

With so many layers, it is never certain what Martin McDonagh's play is about, but this was a crunchingly good production that had me seriously considering going back to try to work it out.

Robert Collins

Verdict: Fabulously nasty