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written by George F. Walker, directed by Jennifer Tarver

Stratford Festival, Studio Theatre, Stratford

August 23-October 3, 2009

"Inanity Masquerading as Insanity"

“Zastrozzi, The Master of Discipline” becomes the first play by the popular Canadian playwright George F. Walker that the Stratford Festival has ever staged.  The Festival calls the play “a Canadian classic”, but for a country with such a relatively short theatrical history, especially in English, this is a meaningless designation.  From 1977 it is one of Walker’s early plays that like “Beyond Mozambique” (1974) or “theatre of the Film Noir” (1981) could be viewed as “exercices de style”.  The play is all surface no substance, like a kind of live cartoon in period costume.  It could be very funny if staged in that light, but unfortunately Jennifer Tarver, who directed Brian Dennehy last year in Beckett, directs the play with stultifying earnestness.

Walker based his play on a plot summary he read of the 1810 novel “Zastrozzi” written by poet Percy Bysshe Shelley when he was 17.  The play feels like it was based on a plot summary rather than a full novel because it is all plot and no depth.  In Walker’s version set in the 1890s, Zastrozzi, the self-proclaimed “master criminal of all Europe” has been trying to avenge himself on Verezzi, an artists and self-proclaimed visionary, for the murder of Zastrozzi’s mother.  Though Zastrozzi is an atheist, he knows Verezzi is a pious Catholic.  Therefore, rather than merely killing Verezzi, Zastrozzi wants to kill his soul by forcing Verezzi into committing suicide, a cardinal sin, thereby sending himself to hell.  To so this, Zastrozzi uses his own mistress Matilda, the self-proclaimed greatest seductress in Europe, to seduce and reject Verezzi and thus drive him to suicide.  But, there are two complicating factors.  Verezzi has already fallen in love with the virgin Julia and Verezzi’s, tutor Victor has been aware of Zastrozzi’s plan all along.

If this all sounds overheated and just plain silly, it is.  In fact, “silly” is a word that crops up frequently in the text when the characters describe others‘ actions.  The main disappointment with the play is that given the gothic plot and three characters who view themselves as superhuman, Walker’s language seldom rises to the level of characters’ fantasies of the conflict of absolute good and evil and too often remains ploddingly pedestrian.  With its nonsensical plot, cartoonish characters and undistinguished dialogue, all that can make “Zastrozzi” work on stage is its style of presentation, a theatrical panache to make in into a kind of children's adventure show for adults.

Tarver, however, approaches the play as if it were some rediscovered work by Beckett.  The lighting, gestures and movement are all tightly controlled on the bare stage.  If this were a play by Beckett this would serve to emphasize the poetry of his minimalist language.  In the context of “Zastrozzi”, it only emphasizes the play’s vapidity.

Of the six actors, only two show any feeling of how to play overblown characters with a sense of irony.  As the whip-cracking Matilda, Sarah Orenstein is able to play camp without going too far.  She is convincingly seductive but also aware that seduction is just a game she happens to be good at.  The other actor, surprisingly, is John Vickery as Victor.  Here, fortunately without his put-on British accent, he embodies all the seriousness of a man who is not merely Verezzi’s tutor but the one who continually saves him from ruin, all too aware of his charge’s insanity.  Oliver Becker as Zastrozzi's servant Bernardo could join this group, but he finds humour in the dimwittedness of his character rather than in his playing style.

Rick Roberts, otherwise a fine actor, never gets hold of the mock-demonic nature of Zastrozzi.  He has been directed to be so icy than instead of chilling us his cool down what little vigour there is in his lines.  Rather than seeming like boundless evil confined within a human body, he seems more like the ghost of man who doesn’t realize he’s dead.   Andrew Shaver’s Verezzi is an embarrassment.  Shaver plays him as if he were Peter Shaffer’s Mozart in “Amadeus” but his attempts to portray the insane Verezzi make him seem merely petulant, effeminate and affected.  Amanda Lisman, who plays a listless Roxane in “Cyrano de Bergerac” gives us an identical Julia.

The play’s design is also peculiar.  Though Walker has moved the action ahead to the 1890s, designer Teresa Przybylski has costumed everyone except Matilda in the swashbuckling garb of the 17th century.  Matilda, for unknown reasons, is in a 1960s red mini-dress.  The baggage carts she uses to move items on and off stage are efficient but how exactly are they related to the play or its themes?  Lighting designer Robert Thomson creates clean squares of light on the stage as one might for an avant-garde play.  They’re very nice but but their very exactness goes completely contrary to the neo-gothic atmosphere of the play.

In a season where the stage fighting has been notably lacklustre, fight director Todd Campbell, along with Simon Fon and Casey Hudecki, has succeeded in creating the most exciting sword fights of any play this year.  They really are the highlight of the play.  If only the direction and acting could rise to the energy level of these battles, this inane display of style over substance might actually be worth seeing.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive

Photo: Rick Roberts and John Vickery. ©David Hou.