A wicked play based on an even wickeder novel by crazy Percy Shelley, Zastrozzi is romantic-revenge camp. A master criminal and evil genius who terrorizes Europe's upper classes, Zastrozzi fancies himself an avenging angel. He rapes, pillages, and assassinates "wrongdoers," including artists who make bad paintings. People, he says, must be held accountable. Since God doesn't exist—Shelley was a loud atheist—the job falls on the shoulders of the mighty Zastrozzi.
The master criminal carries his most acute grudge against a rich-boy, wannabe saint named Verezzi who sadistically murdered Zastrozzi's mother. (We never learn how sadistically: the play's single moment of restraint.) Zastrozzi and his sidekicks (a thuggish, bearded boulder of a man and a swashbuckling German temptress who can kill a man in 1,000 ways and break his heart in 1,001) have been pursuing Verezzi and his sidekick (a fallen priest who indulges Verezzi's messiah complex) for three years. They catch up with him at a country inn. Let the fight choreography begin.
Director Nik Perleros and his cast treat the play like a period-piece blockbuster with hammy acting, lewd jokes, and clanging swords. George F. Walker's 1977 script could be interpreted as a study in unrequited love and beyond-good-and-evil morality, but why bother? Shelley wrote the novel when he was just 17, and those Romantic musings on sex, violence, and the horror of a godless universe are familiar by now. (At the time, the novel was received as a 17th-century Saw. One critic described Zastrozzi as "one of the most savage and improbable demons that ever issued from a diseased brain" and suggested that readers commit their copies to the fireplace.) But this Zastrozzi parlays the story into pure fun.
Ray Tagavilla and Aimée Bruneau ratchet up the psychosexuality as Zastrozzi and his German temptress. Tagavilla nimbly leaps between archly sinister and maniacally squeaky while Bruneau pouts and snarls across the stage. The temptress wants Zastrozzi as a lover, but he's too "preoccupied" with his revenge—and he made an offhanded vow of celibacy to a young aristocrat he'd recently raped. (Excessive in indulgence and abstention, Zastrozzi doesn't do half measures.) Chris Bell as the foppish monk Verezzi is almost too hammy, gasping and trembling distractingly, but that's a misdemeanor. Monica Wulzen, playing a hapless virgin caught in the play's whirlwind, adds blushing tenderness to the pleasurable chaos.
The night I attended, fight choreographer Ryan Spickard stood in for Joe Ivy (down with a flu) as Verezzi's fretful lackey. The swap may have improved the production—Spickard groped through his scenes, script in hand, valiantly executing the role. His occasional flubs only kept himself and the audience laughing. Zastrozzi is that kind of show. It pierces the fourth wall in the least pretentious way and lets its audience in on the fun.
