The Balagan’s Zastrozzi Delivers Sex & Violence Without a Pesky Purpose

Aimee Bruneau and Ray Tagavilla in “Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline” at the Balagan Theatre.

The Balagan Theatre‘s thoroughly entertaining but utterly perplexing Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline (1117 E. Pike St., tickets $12-$15), is like a cautionary tale for radical artists. Beware all you who seek to make a point by offending the mores of your society—eventually, time will mellow your artful outrages into mere schlock and awe. George F. Walker’s 1977 adaptation is fairly faithful to its source, Percy Shelley’s 1810 novel, but all the perversity that Shelley (and maybe Walker, for all I know) thought would make a point about the moral vacuity of modern society has long since become standard entertainment fare.

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Zastrozzi, the maniacal master criminal of Europe, is seeking revenge against the man, now mad and convinced he’s a messenger of God, who brutally killed his mother. Zastrozzi leaves a trail of rape and murder in his wake, and between tedious philosophical discussions, the play supplies superfluous sex and violence with relish, including numerous sword fights, BDSM kink, a number of onstage murders, and—my personal favorite—actual bodice ripping. But when all’s said and done, Zastrozzi is basically a cackling cartoon villain, the ideas in the play so ridiculously collegiate (is there morality without God? Must a secular society invent its own Hell?), that it’s impossible to tell how seriously it should be taken. And to be fair, I don’t think the producers could decide, either, so they settled for just doing it: Neither a stirring drama nor a comic send-up, Zastrozzi just sort of is, in a gleefully violent and funny sort of way.

The play’s success lies mostly in the casting. Cartoonish villains may not be particularly deep, but actors love to play them, and the Balagan has had the good sense to hand the role of Zastrozzi over to the increasingly well respected Ray Tagavilla. Over the past few years, he has been racking up great reviews, and Zastrozzi won’t change that. Tagavilla tackles the character with aplomb: his Zastrozzi switches at the drop of a hat between self-righteous autodidact, cackling madman, and brutally violent killer. Tagavilla’s choices aren’t necessarily original—he adopts the clenched Etonian accent and casual approach to violence that’s been the hallmark of villains at least since Dr. Moriarty—but he pulls them off by being so damn compelling. And one or two technical mess ups, ably played through by Tagavilla, attest to his consistency and competence as an actor.

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Chris Bell, a member of the Balagan company, plays Verezzi, the object of Zastrozzi’s vengeance, mostly for laughs. Verezzi and his father murdered Zastrozzi’s mother in a mistaken attempt to avenge Verezzi’s sister, who they believe was raped and murdered by Zastrozzi (in reality, it was one of his henchmen). Driven mad by guilt at the crime, Verezzi wanders around, posturing as an artist and religious mystic while trying to sack every pretty woman he sees, having escaped Zastrozzi for three years only by the wit of his caretaker, Victor (Joe Ivy), a fallen priest.

The other definite stand-out in the cast is Aimee Bruneau, a long-time Seattle theatre artist (mostly a director) that I’ve never before seen onstage. As Matilda, the seductress and murderer who’s in love with Zastrozzi, she delivers a brilliantly kinky comic performance. She crawls around the stage whining (and presenting) like a cat in heat, spews forth in a thick German accent, grotesquely cleans her nether regions post-unsatisfactory-coitus, and more or less owns every scene she’s in whether she’s begging to be whipped or viciously fighting to the death.

Don MacEllis and Monica Wulzen round out the cast. MacEllis plays Bernardo, the dimwitted but violent henchman, well, and Wulzen is perfectly funny as the virgin in distress that every man in the show (save the priest, of course) either falls in love with or wants to rape. Or both.

The play’s climax leaves most of the cast dead as Walker violently closes up Shelley’s themes. There’s a deus ex machina in which God actually intervenes, but even that doesn’t prove enough to stop the atheist Zastrozzi. The denouement bears a lot of similarity to the end of the second part of Goethe’s Faust (all the Romantics thought alike, I guess), but it’s less compelling: While Goethe’s Faust is a masterpiece of complexity and ambiguity, Zastrozzi is about as deep and complex as a comic book supervillain. But that’s okay, because even if Shelley’s ideas are tedious two centuries later, this production entertains without belaboring the points, while at the same time steering clear of the trap of self-parody.