ROBERTO ZUCCO Directed by Gerald Garutti Designed by Sabin Anca “Young British talents bring French features story to life” Le Parisien, 25th 2003, p. 7 ‘Tonight and tomorrow night, at Nanterre University’s Koltès Theatre (which has ties with the national theatre of the ‘Amandiers’), you shall have the chance to be more than mere spectators. You shall be the witnesses of a beautiful and ambitious project. The company that you will see perform Roberto Zucco, the last play written by Bernard-Marie Koltès in 1988, has a story behind it. Come from beyond the channel to tour in France, the production brings together the best elements of the ADC in Cambridge, itself a source of some of the greatest names in British theatre and cinema. Actors and directors of such international renown as Kenneth Branagh, Stephen Frears or Emma Thompson, first prepared to enter the world of drama in this top university dramatic centre. There are high chances that we should find, amongst the actors of this show, tomorrow’s finest. Certain names are not to be forgotten: Michael Winawer, for example, who plays Zucco, Kathryn Evans, as the mother of the young girl, Ina Popova or Nina Bowden should all be noted down. The average age of the company is of twenty two years. All studying at Cambridge university and speaking several languages, they have been brought together by Gerald Garutti, who reads French at Trinity and decided to produce, in association with the ADC, this difficult play which could almost be a ‘film noir’. The young director, who attended the Cours Simon in Paris and is completing a Phd at the moment, explained his choice in this manner: “This text interests me because it is a huge question mark. The more one becomes acquainted with Zucco, the number one public enemy during the 80’s, the less one understands him. And the characters react in exactly the opposite way to what one would expect: a wound makes them smile, a sign of affection makes them cry, victims are repulsive… In this play, we are never given the keys.” The British audience and critics welcomed the play extremely well, inciting it to continue the adventure beyond the channel. And it is at Nanterre. Roberto Succo. This name was all over the news in the eighties. The young, physically disturbing Italian had acquired a thoroughly morbid track record by the end of his short life (he died at the age of 26) with a double parricide at the age of 18 and a horrifying quantity of crimes including hold-ups and rapes, often committed without any apparent motives. Bernard-Marie Koltès, a contemporary dramatist, created the play from his story. Fascinated, he was inspired by the discovery, in the metro, of a wanted poster concerning the psychopath and assassin on the run. He then wrote the story as a tragedy, changing the patronymic letter of the murder’s name to “Z” and thus appropriating the character. “Roberto Zucco” remains a mystery. We feel that Bernard-Marie-Koltès wrote this play in an attempt to discern what drove the killer on. But we know too that he immediately realised that this reason-defying rampage escapes any possibility of psychoanalysis. In the bloody wake of Zucco, the opaque protagonist, a sad and terrible list of questions remains unanswered. And this statement is as crushing as it is strangely luring. It is the fear of emptiness – staggering.