The Bermuda Musical & Dramatic Society’s latest production ThePillowman comes with a long series of trigger warnings including references to murder, suicide, explicit language and mention of harm to children.

“This is not a family-friendly show,” director Owain Johnston-Barnes said. “It is for a mature audience.”

In fact, when he first decided to stage it, he struggled to find people to be a part of the production. People would read the Wikipedia entry and bail.

The play by British and Irish playwright Martin McDonagh is bleak. Set mostly in a police interrogation room, it is about a writer called Katurian being questioned by a totalitarian regime.

A murderer is closely following the lines of Katurian’s dark stories. Meanwhile, his intellectually challenged brother, Michal, is in the next room, also being interrogated.

“On the flip side, it is also strangely funny,” Mr Johnston-Barnes said. “There is an absurdist comedy thread that runs through this thing.”

He first read the play in a playwriting class in university.

“I was instantly blown away,” he said. “McDonagh’s work is very dark comedy, with an in-your-face vibe. I was so used to traditional plays where everything is quite comfortable and cosy. With this play, I was on the edge of my seat the entire time, because of the way it switches between humour and horror.”

In 2004, Mr McDonagh won a Laurence Olivier Award from the Society of London Theatre, for best new play. The playwright, now a film-maker, has won a number of Academy Awards for films such as The Banshees of Inisherin and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri.

“Before he really got into film, he was writing these plays, mostly set on small islands off the coast of Ireland,” Mr Johnston-Barnes said.

One of Mr Johnston-Barnes’s biggest challenges has been the scheduling of the play. He has had to work around theatre fumigation in the middle of rehearsals, leads leaving the island and a General Election called for opening night.

“Because I work for The Royal Gazette, I will be covering the General Election, so will not be there when the play opens,” he said.

The BMDS chose The Pillowman because it was a relatively simple play to stage. There are only four actors. Stephen Notman takes the lead role of Katurian, while Will Kempe is interrogator Tupolski, Che Barker is Ariel, the second police officer, and Brendon Fourie plays Michal.

The set is relatively basic.

“However, it has been a great opportunity to really let Machum Simmons play with lighting and sound,” Mr Johnston-Barnes said. “He introduced so many cool little ideas. One day he brought this device from home. I am not going to say what it did, but when I saw it, I was like, oh yes, I want this.”

Mr Johnston-Barnes said some people are reluctant to see the play because of the trigger warning ‘harm to children’, but that is never actually depicted.

“It is a plot point,” he said. “It is something that happens, but the play is more about how it impacts everybody else and the tragic circumstances that allowed this thing to happen.”

He considered opening the show on Valentine’s Day, but could not sell it as a romantic play.

“Although, if you are single, this is a great way to meet other single people,” he said. “It is a fantastic play.”

ThePillowman is the kind of show that provokes deep conversations.

“After one person auditioned, I had a long talk with them about the Catholic symbolism in the play, and themes of martyrdom and suffering,” he said. “I have had other conversations about censorship. The next conversation was about stories, and what the play tells us about storytelling and the consequences of it.”

Mr Johnston-Barnes spends most rehearsals sitting in the audience.

“The ideal set-up is you have someone who is on book,” he said. “They hold the script, and so if there is an actor who has a fumble in their lines, we can clean it up. I watch the actors’ emotions, so I can work with a character. This is a show I love a great deal. I know a lot of the character motivations, and a lot of the little hints and teases.”

His hope is to bring his own spin to ThePillowman. “It is one of those shows where a lot of big name directors have done some big, weird things with it,” Mr Johnston-Barnes said.

When The Pillowman was shown in 2023 at the Duke of York’s Theatre in London’s West End the interrogation room set opened up to reveal an entirely different set.

“We can’t do that,” Mr Johnston-Barnes said. “So it was a matter of how to use our imaginations creatively. We got some artwork created for us by Adrienne Smatt, who is a lovely muralist. She also does carpentry and a whole lot of other things. She has created these fantastic images for ThePillowman.”

• The Pillowman will run at the Daylesford Theatre on Dundonald Street in Hamilton from February 18 to 22 at 8pm. Tickets are $35 available at www.ptix.bm