Mrs. Francis Scott Fitzgerald was far more than merely the wife of a world renowned novelist, who called Zelda “the first American flapper,” a fun-loving socialite, dancer, artist and writer.
To the sound of the 1920s song ‘Has Anybody Seen my Gal,’ Zelda walks through the theatre calling out ‘Dr. Carroll ?’ The setting is the Highland Hospital, North Carolina, March 1948 and she has arrived for her weekly assessment but he’s out, ‘probably playing golf’, so she snaffles a few cigarettes. Looking around shiftily, she warns us that ‘Psychiatrists will destroy your soul’. These sessions are always the same, being asked to count backwards from 100. Slowly. She begins counting.
We are her confidantes as she relates her side of the story. Born into a privileged family in Alabama, aged 18 she met the dashing Lt. Scott Fitzgerald at a country club dance – virtually love at first sight. She reminisces their engagement night with euphoric glee, while her father dismisses the ‘Princeton drop out, alcoholic Yankee’. Her narrative moves back and forward through a dreamlike trance: remembering the idyllic freedom of a drunken drive in Scott’s new Rolls Royce, but then she snaps back to become a cowering creature alone in this asylum prison.
In a blue summer dress and wrapped up in cosy cardigan, Zelda puts on the doctor’s crisp white coat, sits at his desk and takes a sneaky look at her medical notes. With a sardonic tone of voice, she reads the brutal diagnosis, ‘schizophrenia … incurably deranged.’
This Side of Paradise was published in 1920, just a few weeks before their marriage. But Scott had already based Zelda and their first encounter for the character, Rosalind, a flirtatious flapper who meets Amory at a debutante ball: ’Oh, she was magnificent—pale skin, the color of marble in starlight, and eyes that glittered green as emeralds.”
Scott and Zelda were the golden couple who epitomised the spirit of the Jazz Age, from New York to Nice, living the Gatsbyesque high life to extravagant excess. That’s a lifetime away now. As she counts down, 49, 48, 47, she dreams of the blue Riviera, ‘a place as close to paradise you could ever get.’ But as Zelda reveals Scott was a plagiarist. He told her dismissively that she is just a ‘third rate writer’ but he put his name to her short stories, stole her diaries and letters to use in his fiction: ‘I am his books.’
Dramatic action is limited in this small Attic venue - suitably claustrophobic but little space to move and with a blast of A/C, her soft whispers are often drowned out. A little more period jazz music would add to the atmosphere.
Catherine DuBord brilliantly portrays Zelda’s dual personality manner and mood like a cool chameleon with all the sharp shifting nuances of emotion – a joyful laugh as she recalls the sweet scent on Scott’s skin, ‘pencils and tweed’ but then in dark despair, she cries out hysterically, ‘Why can’t you love me?!!'
William Luce’s bittersweet play flows along with poetic lyricism to capture this tragic literary love affair from romantic passion to heartbreaking betrayal.
Showtimes:
August 7-12, 14-19 @ 13.45
Tickets: Full price £13, concessions £10
Age 14+ Strong language/swearing
https://tickets.edfringe.com/whats-on/last-flapper