Roberto Zucco: spectacular set and performances, puzzling play
29 Sep 2024 - Photos by Jeremy Mimnagh

A lot of care, thought and resources have been put into Buddies production of Roberto Zucco, with results that are occasionally spectacular but just as often puzzling. An incredibly versatile Lego-like set is reconfigured to create playing spaces around a central platform which itself makes a thunderous entrance. The set pieces are moved, with visible precision and effort, by a backstage team and the performers. We are always conscious that we are watching a play, a device to presumably remind us to focus on the ideas and themes. We do, though the text by Bernard-Marie Koltes, translated from the German by Martin Crimp, meanders through a series of sketches that never add up to a whole beyond an overwhelming world-weary nihilism. Director and Buddies' new artistic director Ted Witzel (Every Little Nookie, Lulu v7, Mr Truth, The Marquise of O, All's Well That Ends Well, La Ronde) compensates with painstaking visuals—the opening riff on Hamlet is echoed in a reverse image Icarusian finale—but it is a struggle to get anything beyond admiration across the footlights. When Brechtian devices are used, the emotional content can be suppressed.

The vignettes are threaded together by the tale of a serial killer who rampages through poverty-stricken Little Chicago. After escaping jail where he has been confined for killing his father, Roberto Zucco proceeds to strangle his mother, flirt with a woman he may have raped who then falls in love with him, takes a hostage, possibly kills others (like much else, the evidence is ambiguous and contradictory), and becomes a celebrity for being simultaneously terrifying and attractive. Jakob Ehman (A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, The Circle, Nature of the Beast, Cockfight, Donors, Firebrand) has quirky charisma to burn and, with a little swagger, manages to make Zucco empathetic if not understandable. It is a tough role as the character is written as a cipher, a symbol, which Koltes winks at by having Zucco's one emotional explanatory monologue made into a malfunctioning pay phone. Is he evil incarnate? Many think so. But they also offer contradictory ways to ward off evil and/or debate the very nature of evil. Koltes isn't interested in Zucco's inner life, though the cliché of a serial killer as sex object and celebrity is a trope worth further exploring, he seems interested in Zucco's lack of an inner life. Thought-provoking, but it hangs Robert Zucco, and Robert Zucco, out to dry when Ehman bares all in a frantic attempt at catharsis.

The actors are uniformly excellent and have a playful attitude to the distancing stylistic device they are operating under. And being occasionally changed to further distancing microphones. Fiona Highet as an unnamed prostitute, strides to centrestage, strikes a pose, cue the spotlight, and instantly she is consumed with abject terror. All of the cast get to perform extreme emotional states and never wink as they transition in the blink of an eye. Samantha Brown is the girl who carries a torch for Zucco into the depths of degradation. Her transformation, there are also themes of costuming and stripping off layers of personality and humanity, from a young terrorized boy to a suddenly confident whore, is jarring and as erotic as Roberto Zucco gets. Oyin Oladejo (Is God Is, The Father) might have the most quick character and gender changes with each one etched precisely. Kwaku Okyere (Choir Boy, Iphigenia and the Furies, Shove It Down My Throat, The Seat Next to the King) plays a series of unsavoury characters—he sells his sister into prostitution and his fist fight with Zucco is brutal and visceral—before becoming a comic lynchpin in a trio of gawking spectators. 

There has been a lot of attention paid to motivation and meaning, with the commitment and comprehension of the actors never in question. However the text is epigrammatic and full of bold statements and contradictions that insist on a staginess that keeps us at a remove, thinking instead of experiencing. The only actor who turns the words into conversation is Daniel MacIvor (The Inheritance, Here Lies Henry, Monster, Let's Run Away, New Magic Valley Fun Town, Who Killed Spalding Gray?, Cake and Dirt, The Best Brothers, A Beautiful View, Arigato, Tokyo, His Greatness) who has a wealth of experience with texts rife with ambiguity and fragmented rhythms. There is a remarkable scene where MacIvor plays an older man on a subway bench who is possibly trying to seduce Zucco. MacIvor turns the words into delicate poetry accompanied by small but blatant gestures. Ehman responds by listening and possibly welcoming the seduction. And when he speaks, Koltes's words flow into a dialogue of two monologues. It is ambiguous if the older man survives the encounter or just what the encounter becomes, because the set transforms in a visual coup de theatre and we are on to the next vignette.

Perhaps because it is the one queer moment, aside from the playwright's orientation, in the play that the moment resonates. Koltes is more concerned with social justice, the subjugation of women and the horrors of straight men, and the grinding hopelessness that drives these characters to violence as the only way to find some meaning or sensation in their lives. Roberto Zucco is a curious choice for a season opener at Buddies. Though Zucco does say that he only gets "a hard-on for women out of pity" so there may be a subtext that I missed. I'm still trying to reconcile the Hamlet allusions and quotes, and may be digging too deeply when I ponder the references to ancient film comedy duos and trios. It's that kind of play. Forcing you to watch and learn a convoluted lecture that skips here and there as Koltes's whims take him. He has a lot to say about a lot of topics and this production makes it sufficiently theatrical to be constantly involving if ultimately puzzling.