A lot of messiness could have been avoided if Zombie’s deranged serial killer Quentin P. had only taken time out of trying to lobotomize his teenage victims with an ice pick, and watched the film Frances. In that film, the lobotomy process is shown with great detail (there are diagrams!) and Jessica Lange’s Frances Farmer is used as an example. But Quentin did not watch that film (or learned to love contractions in his speech), so his failures all end up disposed of somewhere near his home in Detroit.

A look at the evil that lurks in supposedly anyone, Zombie (adapted by star Bill Connington from Joyce Carol Oates’s novella) feels dated. Everything about Quentin’s appearance, hair greased down in a side-part, short-sleeved shirt tucked into unflattering khaki pants, his eyes glittering behind enormous glasses, screams child molester. No one is surprised anymore when the quiet, kind of weird guy next door shows up on To Catch a Predator, but previously convicted child molester Quentin goes about his bloody business unnoticed.

And though much was made about the show’s frighteningly realistic glimpse into the mind of a killer during its previous incarnation as part of the 2008 Fringe Festival, Connington’s mannered performance acts as a glass barrier between Quentin and the audience. Penetrating his bizarre speech patterns (attempting what might be a Midwestern accent, he often sounds more like either an Indian cab driver or a robot) is almost impossible, focusing attention on how he’s speaking rather than on what he’s saying.

And what he’s saying is shocking, scary and graphic, but nothing in Zombie feels new. Quentin P. and his story have been seen and heard before, from newspaper clippings to lurid biographies to endless Lifetime movies. Just because Quentin goes into a little more detail about jamming an ice pick into someone’s eye doesn’t make him more interesting than Jeffrey Dahmer or Ted Bundy. He’s actually less fascinating, since he’s so easily dismissed at evening’s end. And any good villain should linger on in your memory, long after the story has ended.

>Zombie
Through Mar. 29, Theater Row, 410 W. 42nd St. (betw. 8th & 9th Aves.), 212-279-4200; times vary, $21.25.