Roberto Zucco # 6

Where cataclysms occur, by Romain Fohr

 

 

The set now stands on the Myeongdong Theater’s stage. In the middle of the stage, technicians have installed the set of Roberto Zucco which will first be performed on 23 September, opening the Autumn season at this South Korean theatre.

 

 

I was first struck, from the start of the rehearsal I attended, by the implicit reference here to the scenography designed by the Russian Vsovolod Meyerhold for Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector, presented at the Moscow Art Theater in 1928. Lambert-wild’s mentor in the 1990s, Matthias Langhoff, also put on a production of Gogol’s play, with an exhilarating set designed at the time by Jean-Marc Stelhé. On top of a dark three-meter high wall, a grey cyclorama closes off the horizon while, downstage, the floor is covered in pieces of black paper. They pile up, like millennia-old strata of volcanic dust or like nuclear snow. 

 

Like a ghost of Vesuvius, the stage erupts just before Roberto Zucco kills his different victims. A rain of ashes falls on the city, like a climatic phenomenon that would also be forewarning us of the crimes to come. Is this a sign from the Gods? The main piece that shapes the set in a semi-circle is a black parietal structure, hacked by large scratches as if Edward Scissorhands (from the film directed by Tim Burton) or Freddy Krueger (in Wes Craven’s movie) had been the ones who carved these with a few clumsy gestures or during some macabre activities.

 

In the middle of a no man’s land, a wall bearing doors curves near the auditorium, yet not going further than the tormentors. This time, unlike in previous work by Jean Lambert-wild, there are no circular stages; instead, a concave wall covered with doors, where it is no longer possible to distinguish between inside and outside, interior and exterior, real or imagined.

 

In turn, the audience sees on this wall a prison cell’s door, a bedroom door, the door of an underground train, a fridge door, a phone box door, a few advertisement billboards, a police station door, a street in Little Chicago…

 

The set designer decided to include seven doors, which gives us an idea of what dramaturgical decisions were made for this production.  

 

These seven doors echo Seven Against Thebes, Aeschylus’ text in which seven leaders go to war after Oedipus’ death in order to take his city, Thebes. At the time, Thebes provided an example of how theatres should be built. Fifteen centuries later, the Italian Renaissance scenographer Palladio followed that example to design antique streets and doors in his Vincenza theatre, near Venice. Aeschylus’ play retells the story of the army of Thebes and the Argive army who plan to take the city by going through one of its seven doors. Eteocles, Oedipus’ son, decides to guard the seventh door, in spite of Oedipus’ predictions that warn him of his own death: that he would be killed by his brother Polynices. Guarding the seventh door, Eteocles meets his fate.

 

 

On this stage, in this set, Zucco moves while knowing all along that, like Eteocles, he is running to his demise. It is a headlong rush into denial. Opening the different doors that surround the orchestra, he accepts this will be his last fight.

 

The ancient Greek device classifies in detail the part that each door plays. The central door is only to be used by the main character, while secondary characters use all other doors.

 

Lorenzo Malaguerra and Jean Lambert-wild evoke these doors from Antiquity when Zucco hammers on the door at the centre to call his Mother, who is coming in through another door, stage left. The Mother won’t open the door behind which Zucco waits for her. She can’t use the door that is reserved for the gods, because she is a mortal, and at the end of this scene, she will die. The Mother becomes Jocasta-like, and dies by strangulation. Like Jocasta, who hanged herself with her scarf, the Mother dies when Zucco breaks her neck with one sharp blow. But Malaguerra and Lambert-wild do not follow this rule throughout the show, instead, they elegantly evoke it in Zucco’s first scene without returning to it later.

 

The concave wall frees the mental space of the audience, who are sat in the continuation of the architectural circle of Antiquity. The assembly gathers on the other side of the orchestra. The power of this design comes from the fact that, through the show, it invisibly transforms. At times, it is a closed off topos, and at times, it opens up to the rest of the world.

 

The oversized doors frame the different characters’ entrances. Going through them, they seem to turn into small fragile beings, in front of Zucco the ogre, who overlooks them. In turn, Zucco becomes fragile too when he goes through the door, hit by the pimp who attacks him in the streets of Little Chicago.   

 

 

 

What is off-set appears and disappears with the lights that at times lit up the stage and at times hide it, giving it a twilight-like atmosphere.

 

Renaud Lagier’s lighting design paints a colourful dream-like world. Each sequence ends with a black out, which at times provokes visual hallucinations. The persistence of vision gives the impression that for a few seconds, the wall is coming closer, before going back to where it was.

The labyrinth’s doors open towards us: we access the mortals’ life on stage, when the world of the gods lies beyond the wall. During the epilogue, dressed simply in white underwear, Zucco climbs on top of this totemic wall, like Icarus trying to reach the sun. He appears like a shadow puppet, a carved out muse erected on the antique wall, before falling to his death.

 

Lambert-wild and Malaguerra refer to the nine Muses, Zeus and Mnemosyne’s daughters who live between Mount Parnassus and Olympus. For Plato, the Muses become the intermediary between the poet, possessed and creative, and the gods. On the façade’s tympanum, Zucco draws the outlines of a Muse.

 

How many female characters are there, in the play? Why aren’t any of them given a name? In Koltès’ text, haven’t they become a memory of the antique Greek chorus?

 

 

In Euripides’ The Phoenician Women, Oedipus is not dead but he has gouged his eyes out. Eteocles, his son, asks Tiresias, the wise blind man, for advice. Lambert-wild and Malaguerra reference this moment, with the character of the Old Gentleman who becomes blind and uses a white cane.

 

It is as if Zucco was at the same time both Polynices and Eteocles, Oedipus’ fratricide son: he fights against himself. One part of him remains innocent, with a child-like quality, love, an ability to listen and be grateful. The other part, more feral, makes him do incredibly violent things. Like Oedipus’ journey, his is a long drawn-out suicide. Like Oedipus, who killed Laius and Jocasta, Zucco kills his father and his mother. In a way, isn’t Oedipus the first serial killer? Like Oedipus, Zucco plays all the parts: he is the detective and he is the murderer. Like Eteocles before him, he follows his own path, knowing that he is heading for death. He is Oedipus’ two sons, a mask with a thousand faces.

 

When he climbs on top of the wall, Zucco overcomes all obstacles, and gets closer to the gods to reach Olympus. But he burns his wings. He falls back on the land of humans, burned by his insane desires in a burst of incandescent light. 

 

Throughout the show, Lambert-wild and Malaguerra stay clear from taking the direction of a cinematic aesthetics, which so many European theatre directors work with. They reject sequences put together in montages, with dissolves and gradual transitions. It is worth noting that there are no screens anywhere on stage, which is very welcome, as this would have seemed a really obsolete proposition.

 

Even Zucco’s face, projected on the city walls becomes a stylised anime-like projection.

 

The music used in the show is another element of the stage language. Working with Olivier Messiaen’s compositions that evoke birdsongs, Lorenzo Malaguerra and Jean Lambert-wild add many sonic elements: birds chirping, a crackling fire, gusts of whirling wind, the voices of the Girl or Zucco, coming from beyond the grave. This chiselled sound editing adds to the oppressive atmosphere that extends to the auditorium. 

 

These last days of rehearsal, with the set, suggest that this will be a superb show. Four more rehearsal days before the show opens. 

 

Show

The story of Bernard-Marie Koltès’ Roberto Zucco, based on Roberto Succo’s infamous journey, is set in...