Franz Kafka meets Quentin Tarantino meets The Brothers Grimm in this week's play at the Theatre Royal.

Martin McDonagh's dazzling play is a riveting and superbly performed piece of writing. It is not surprising it won the 2004 Olivier Award for Best New Play.

This is not a play for the squeamish and if you don't care for the F-word, give it a miss.

It opens with the interrogation of a writer in the police station of an unnamed totalitarian state where the detectives are a law unto themselves.

At first it seems like a game of good cop/bad cop until screams come from the adjoining cell.

The police are trying to apprehend a child murderer who's modus operandi echoes the stories written by prime suspect, Katurian K Katurian (Lee Ingleby).

His interrogators Tupolski (Jim Norton) and Ariel (Ewan Stewart) seem determined to get to the truth even if it implicates Katurian's brain-damaged brother, Michael (Edward Hogg), and involves much violence.

Despite the vivid gore, McDonagh's play blurs reality as things get murkier and the twists and turns gather pace. Nothing is what it seems or is even slightly predicatable.

The murders were grisly beyond measure. A boy bled to death, a young girl was forced to swallow apple slices embedded with razor blazes and others have been suffocated, all apparently by "the pillowman". And just what did happen to the little Jesus girl?

McDonagh, who scripted The Lieutenant Of Inishmore and The Seven Psychopaths, specialises in violent fairy tales. This play inhabits a no-man's land between grim reality and fairy tales, which means princesses are nasty as well as beautiful, children do not have happy lives and "happy ever after" is not necessarily the ending.

This National Theatre production is directed by Toby Frow and is highly cinematic, using horror and nightmares to tell the story. However, it is also brilliantly funny and you'll laugh a great deal, possibly to soothe your nerves.

This is wonderfully hard-hitting theatre, which provides plenty of food for thought - which is exactly what theatre should do.

Although such a complex play can't be reduced to a single message, it does remind you of the power of story-telling. Make sure you see this play.