Theatre Review: Zastrozzi, the Master of Discipline

If truth is stranger than fiction, it can apparently be a little scarier as well, as I learned on Granville Island Tuesday night. My night of spontaneous theatre started before the curtain went up on Zastrozzi: The Master of Discipline at the Waterfront, even before the lady and I set foot in the theatre, actually. It opened on the patio of the Cat's Meow over dinner, courtesy of the panhandler with the full-on Manson beard who offered to take the knife from the next table and insert in into my neck after I brusquely declined to fork over some money. It was a convincingly nerve-rattling performance, to say the least, and I'm used to death threats from drunks whom I've said no to. (I tended bar in Port Moody for a few years.) The manager on duty graciously intervened right on cue and dispatched Charlie without incident, but the tone for the night had been set. And although the rest of the night's entertainment was also accompanied by outsized characters wielding blades, it never quite reached the same level of tension, which, considering the play, is not necessarily a bad thing.

This was the first time I'd seen George F. Walker's much-lauded, proudly Canadian signature piece, and I had no idea what to expect. Billed by the playwright as a melodrama, explanatory copy of the plot reads as downright daunting: nihilist master-criminal cuts a bloody swath through Europe in his relentless pursuit of vengeance against the man who defiled and murdered his mother. Sounds pretty hyperbolic, but as it turns out it's really very comic, and in the hands of fledgling company Enlightenment Theatre, seriously funny.

And I do mean comic, watching Zastrozzi is like experiencing a funny book come to life. The actors are all lavishly costumed in the requisite billowy sleeves, bust-spilling corsets and high leather boots suited to the buckled swash period, but the dialogue is rapier-sharp and contemporary, which serves to effectively undercut all the rusty theatrical conventions that the play at first seems to embrace. In the first scene between Enlightenment artistic director David Benedict Brown and the priceless Jon Lachlan Stewart the work clicked into a distinct Kids in the Hall rhythm, and I mean that as high praise indeed. The comic timing on the young cast is impeccable, Kendahl Diebold as the quote-unquote chaste Julia notably wrings every possible laugh out of her time on stage. Marco Soriano in the title role gives a mesmerizing actor-ego-free performance of a character that is written as pure ego, and gives a workshop in full commitment while he's at it.

There are some notes that fall a little flat, the sex was never sexy enough, the violence never violent enough, and there's lots of opportunities for both in the script. The character of Matilda, a sado-masochistic seductress played by Briana Rayner, needed to be way sluttier, but I suspect that's a condition of the director's sensibilities more than an acting choice. In a summer starved for indie theatre Zastrozzi is well worth your time and money, and I, for one, am looking forward to further Enlightenment.