Playwright Martin McDonagh is enjoying acclaim these days as a screenwriter and movie director, his Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri having already landed a brace of Golden Globe Awards plus nominations for seven Academy Awards (we’ll see how many he walks away with this weekend). But early on, McDonagh was noted for his stage works, including 1996’s The Beauty Queen of Leenane (about a spinster and her domineering mother) and 2003’s The Pillowman, a dark opus about totalitarian oppression, which won the Olivier Award for Best New Play and was also nominated for a Tony Award for Best Play. (The Broadway production starred Billy Crudup and Jeff Goldblum.) This new ACT 1 production is not Nashville’s first. GroundWorks Theatre mounted it in 2008, with Megan Murphy Chambers making her directorial debut with a cast that included actor/writer/director Nate Eppler. This time out, Kurt Jarvis directs The Pillowman, and the players are Diego Gomez, Jason Lewis, Taylor Foster and Chilton Stewart. Through March 17 at Darkhorse Theater, 4610 Charlotte Pike MARTIN BRADY
