Angel Torres and Sara Barker in Washington Shakespeare’s production of Lulu. Photo by C. Stanley Photography.

Lulu is bad news. Don’t believe me? Just take a glance at the couch that resides immediately in front of front row, center, in Washington Shakespeare Company’s production of this Nicholas Wright-penned mashed-up adaptation of two notorious Frank Wedekind plays. There you’ll find the trail of broken hearts and broken bodies the seductress leaves in her wake, in the form of dead husbands — one per act of this bloody, bawdy play — forced to sit there and watch helplessly after she has heartlessly dispatched them.

The Dead Man’s Couch is one of a number of nice touches in director Christopher Henley’s highly stylized production, which also includes expressionistic flourishes in the cartoon-surreal set, highly mannered performances, and a backlit scrim where Lulu’s costume changes happen in suggestive silhouettes. A soundtrack featuring the Kurt Weill-meets-Billboard Hot 100 stylings of German bandleader Max Raabe tops things off nicely, but none of it seems enough to save a text that is overlong and begins to get repetitive somewhere in the second act as we march past the two-hour mark. Lulu’s pattern is well established by this point: marry rich, take on obsessed lovers, and replace the former with the latter when the current husband has met his violent end. Rinse, repeat.