IAN JOHNSTON/DANGERPANTS PHOTOGRAPHYWhen the performing bear shows up, listen closely.
“Zapoi” is Russian slang, dating back to at least the 19th century, for the national habit of going on days-long benders so catastrophic that, as one ethnographer reported to the Anthropological Society of London in 1870, they “are regarded as a disease.” The word doesn’t appear anywhere besides the title in Quinn Armstrong’s world-premiere comedy at Annex Theatre, but it could be a one-word summary of a sprawling fantasia that treats Russian suffering and derangement as an endemic sickness…
