Jump-out-your seat horror is associated more with cinema than theatre but that didn't stop this suspense-ridden drama from winning this year's Olivier Award for Best New Play.

After wowing critics at London's National Theatre The Pillowman, written by Martin McDonagh, is now on tour around the country with a new cast and crew.

It opens as writer Katurian is arrested by the police in a totalitarian state. His crime is not, as is initially assumed, anything to do with political subversiveness. Instead, it turns out he has written some gruesome short stories that bear an uncanny resemblance to child murders recently committed in the town. As the interrogation progresses, the writer's brain-damaged brother Michal is also dragged in for questioning.

"It's not the sort of horror that would make you run out of the theatre screaming or give you nightmares," explains director Toby Frow. "It's more the sort of horror you get on the ghost train.

"It does have horror film moments though. The music and rhythm, and the phrasing of the dialogue are straight from Seventies and Eighties films.

"But the gruesome elements are more based on the tradition of the fairy tale. If you look at The Brothers Grimm and stories of that sort of ilk, fairy tales have always been very gruesome, with legs being pulled off and nasty deaths."

The stories Katurian writes are like fairy tales themselves. As well as being on the macabre side they are full of fantastical twists, and deal with such subject matter as children giving their fathers razor-blade filled apples to eat.

In a particularly gruesome tale, a man wakes up in a gibbet (a medieval device which holds the body of an executed criminal for the purpose of public display). He is between two other men - also in gibbets - with rape and murder signs hanging on them. He knows his crime must be worse than theirs because passers-by spit at him vehemently, but since his sign is on the outside of his gibbet he cannot see what he is supposed to have done.

These tales are not only central to the plot but take on a life of their own, as a couple of them are acted out in a 'play within a play'.

"You come away from the show feeling like you have had three plays all at once," says Toby. "There's the totalitarian state-style interrogation scenes, the more sensitive bits between the two brothers, and the fairytale-like stories acted out - three very different things going on simultaneously.

"In some ways it's all a fairy tale, or a tale about fairy tales."

Despite sinister undertones and gory topics, The Pillowman is not short on laughs. With wickedly black humour, McDonagh tackles dark subject matter with a light-hearted touch.

"Martin's sense of humour is one on its own," says Toby. "He tries to find what's funny in all situations and then milk it for all its worth. It has its dire moments and it's very new wave, kind of Little-Britain-esque. It is very politically incorrect and brilliantly tasteless.

"There's something about humour that allows you to look straight into the face of the most scary things. Doing things like the gruesome bits very seriously would be hard to take but somehow, when you have it through humour it's more palatable."

As well as being compared to Little Britain's cross-dressing wags Walliams and Lucas, McDonagh's style has also been given the Tarantino-esque tag.

"Everyone's likened to Tarantino these days, aren't they?" exclaims Toby.

"No, I don't think so. Martin doesn't take himself as seriously as Tarantino. They're similar in the way they use humour for horror. And their interest in popular culture, and murders. Also the sense of glorying in goryness.

"So I suppose that's quite a lot! Maybe they are quite similar - alhough Martin wouldn't agree."

Starts 7.45pm, Thursday and Saturday matinees 2.30pm, Tickets £15/£24, Tel 0870 606650