My Son, The Killer | Joëlle Prefontaine cradles Vincent Forcier in Roberto Zucco.
DETAILS
ROBERTO ZUCCO
Directed by Stefan Dzeparoski. Written by Bernard-Marie Koltès. Starring Vincent Forcier, Mari Chartier, Joëlle Prefontaine, Blythe Haynes. Timms Centre for the Arts (University of Alberta). To Apr 4. Tickets available through TIX on the Square (420-1757) or the Timms Centre box office.
***1/2
I’m not going to lie: Stefan Dzeparoski’s staging of Roberto Zucco is no cakewalk for its viewers. We’re asked to put aside morals and judgment while watching characters at their most raw and frighteningly destructive. It’s not easy stuff, nor is it pretty, and the difficult themes are never softened for the audience. And, oh yeah, the most relatable character is one of the 20th century’s most notorious serial killers.
The play opens as a piece of modern dance — two prison guards twist and leap across stage before speaking their metaphysical dialogue. (“This is a modern prison. Escape is not possible.”) It’s immediately clear that the script is not going to be the focus of this production — correctly so, as French playwright Bernard Marie Koltès seems to have conceptualized the script as a jumping-off point for a director, designers, and performers with a strong vision, which this group certainly possesses.
Every performer dedicates themselves fully to Dzeparoski’s physically demanding staging. Roberto’s mother (Joëlle Prefontaine) conveys the inexpressible horror of mothering a patricidal killer by crawling, doubling over, and clutching her womb. It’s overwrought, sure, this type of acting makes perfect sense in Roberto Zucco’s overwrought
world. Meanwhile, baby-faced Vincent Forcier plays the title character, who receives letters by the thousands from disturbed, fanatical women as he sits on death row. Despite playing a character who is often frustratingly distant, he embodies the desperate search for human connection that is the crux of the play. His scenes, especially a humorously sad monologue in which he declares, “They should close the schools and enlarge the cemeteries,” into a broken payphone, are standouts.
Don’t be mistaken, though: this is an ensemble piece, and each performer is integral in creating the loveless, terrifying world Zucco wants to escape. The actors playing the family of Zucco’s disturbingly not-so-unwilling rape victim, emote by crawling, wheezing, and well, grappling incestuously with each other. (Sorry, there’s no other way to put it.) This family must be one of the most uncomfortably dysfunctional in all of theatre — indeed, the scenes with the murderer almost come as a relief.
Tully Johnson’s soundscape of tinkling piano and repetitive city noises conjure a sense of existential dread, though sometimes they eclipse the esoteric dialogue. Along with Robert Shannon’s morbid city set that the cast of degenerates wanders through, the technical elements nail the nightmarish ambience of a place that is hell on earth.
Film lovers will appreciate the stylistic nods to everything from German expressionism to the disaffected violence of the French New Wave to a Tarantino reference that is kind of pointless, but pretty fun all the same. Roberto Zucco overshoots, but if you’re willing, you should be able to take some lesson home with you from this roiling mess of wretched humanity.
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