It's actually very humorous,” director Harry Atkinson insists of The Pillowman, Martin McDonagh’s nightmarish exploration of power and its abuse.

The 2003 play opens in an unspecified totalitarian state, where a writer has been arrested following a series of gruesome child murders that seem to have been inspired by those detailed in his Brothers Grimm-esque fairy stories.

The writer denies murdering the children; the only other person who has read all the stories, however, is the writer’s intellectually-challenged brother, who is in the next interrogation room.

Often likened to John Synge for his bleak humour and bold portrayals of rural Ireland and the modern drama of Harold Pinter and David Mamet, McDonagh is renowned for his unflinching treatment of the human condition.

Here, he looks at storytelling and how we use stories in an attempt to understand and shape our experiences.

Many consider The Pillowman McDonagh’s best and most disturbing work, in a career characterised by warped comedy and bloody horror.

Harry, who is directing a production of the play for Brighton Little Theatre, first saw it performed at The National Theatre in 2005 when David Tennant was cast as the writer, Katurian, and Jim Broadbent played one of the corrupt detectives investigating the case.

“I was absolutely captivated by it,” he recalls. “It was very black.

“Martin McDonagh is one of our leading playwrights and he’s certainly what you would call experimental.”

It was a challenge “coming to terms” with the play’s subject matter and with how to stage it, Harry says. “We explored the text and experimented to see what came out of it. What emerged was, perhaps surprisingly, quite a funny play. It’s in the power of the writing.”

The company takes the rather radical step of using film to screen several scenes instead of performing them live. It could be seen as a witty acknowledgement of McDonagh’s recent defection to the movies (he wrote the award-winning In Bruges), but the truth is more practical: “The play requires four sets, which they can do at The National,” says Harry. “It’s rather hard in a place the size of Brighton Little Theatre!”

* Starts 7.30pm, tickets £7.50. Call 01273 777738