Roberto Zuko arrested in Australian garage

 By: Sabah Alanbari

     Bernard-Marie Koltes  (1948-1989) is a French playwright described by The Times as the pioneer of a new style in dramatic writing. His play (Roberto Zucco) was the last of his great works which found its way to the Australian theatre. The play is staged by the Australian director (of Portuguese origin) Paolo Castro who created an outstanding show performed not on a regular stage but in a car park in Adelaide CBD.

The play is based on the true story of Zucco who was imprisoned for killing his father. He escaped prison, and later to become, because of his deranged behaviour and horrific acts, the character of epic stories.

 In this show, the Paolo Castro trapped Bernard’s characters in a confined space, with narrow entrances and exits, huge concrete pillars, and an elevator. All of them are part of the car park, the only added elements to the set are a middle size table, two chairs, and a wooden door fixed to the ground on a wooden frame.

The place is almost empty, except the vehicle which was already in the car park and the limited set. Despite this emptiness, the actors were able to fill the space with their bodies, moving here and there in an artistic and   way. This was perfectly performed. The actors occupied all the space and were able to use it to express themselves proficiently and with high technical skills. You feel, sitting on the ground or on wooden benches, as if you were a part of the show, or as if you had entered the place to see what is going on.

The moment you get into the dark garage space looking for a place to sit, a security guard sheds his torchlight in your eyes, check if you are the character they are searching for, and then acknowledges that you're just part of the audience and not a wanted criminal.

The show starts with the interplay between the actors and the audience who found itself hostage to the place while following the course of events and the changes that take place on the garage’s ground/stage set in this tight underground space.

After that, an actress enters from the wooden door carrying a basket of clothes, followed by afierce looking young man. He moves around her proffering angry words, trying to force her to tell him something dear to him. He is Roberto Zucco, who we discover from the scene, an unstable man who doesn’t think twice to choke, shoot, or death, whoever doesn't cooperate with him. From his very first entrance on stage, he appears as a killer, a character unsettled in one thought or sate, never in peace with himself or others, enraged with himself as much as with the others, who seem to live an eternal tension screaming loudly in other’s faces.

The director reveals this collective tension in a silent scene when the actor stalks the actress until he grabs her neck and chokes her revealing his internal violence, fuelled by his desire for revenge.

The actress falls, but gets up again and kisses him passionately. This scene reveals the sadistic part of Zucco’s character, as well as how attractive he is to vulnerable women he’s in a relationship with.

He’s a troubled man, confused, and very unsecure.

 He prevents the women, whose innocent child he just murdered, from following him, but soon changes his mind to let her go with him…

It must be noted here how the director takes advantage of the configuration and all the parts of the garage. For instance, he uses the elevator to mark the entrance and exit of the actor. This is another example of the clever usage of the restricted elements of the stage and the barren setting.

Zucco has relationships with other women that are all controlled by his turbulent and destructive temper. Ssometimes he is a lover who melts in love and desire for them, sometimes he is their compulsive killer, and at another times he calls for peace. The police was in constant search for him and followed his traces. And yet, it was difficult for them to find him. However, the woman whom he had raped as a child and fell deeply in love with him, decided to look for him everywhere, challenging her brother who once had a bloody fight with Zucco in a scene skillfully created by the director.

The girl by chance sees him and runs towards him calling his name, which draws the attention of two policemen who arrest him at gun point before sending him to jail.

The director, here, used the cars exit and entrance gate to symbolize the jail. He succeeded in manipulating the place and its components technically, to create sense, and to make the place seems more in accord with the set of events. This coherence creates a sense of harmony convincing the spectator that these events actually happened here.

And because Zucco has a turbulent and complex character, his arrest attracted the attention of the media which enter the place to take pictures of him, and write reports about all the strange and weird things he has done.

The show ends at this point, without closing curtains, as if these many ramified events also part of our lives. For everything in our lives has to come to an end, but without closing a curtain.

So, what did Paolo Castro, the director of this show want to tell us? He wanted to say that Roberto is one of us, a member of a social group with its own system, system characterized by its cruelty and tense relations which burdens him heavily, pushing him to release all his repressed energy as a latent evil force.

This concept occupies Castro’s mind. This is why he had previously chosen my play “Questions of the executioner” aalthough he didn’t have the chance to direct it on stage due to some example circumstances. My play also explores the concept that tense social circumstances have the ability to create executioners, murderers, and serial killers.

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* This article dealt the performance play on Tuesday 28/ 11/ 2017.