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LIGHTNING REVIEW: 'Zelda' portrays hazardous side of fame

Lauren Kennedy stars in “Zelda: An American Love Story,” on stage through Oct. 28 at the Flat Rock Playhouse, 2661 Greenville Highway, Flat Rock.

By Bill Moss, Published: October 11, 2012

FLAT ROCK — Asheville, and the old Highland Mental Hospital, is a non-credited player in "Zelda: An American Love Story," which opened last week at the Flat Rock Playhouse.

Given its subject matter — the too-fast rise and the dramatic fall of Scott and Zelda, the exemplars of excess in the Jazz Age — "Zelda" made for a happier 2½-hour investment than I would have imagined. The day I went, a Sunday afternoon, was like the play's arc. The promise of spring and the hot passion of summer were long gone; a drizzly winterlike day had arrived too early.
But a story that's told in 23 songs and portrayed by two fine actors and a talented ensemble is not going to come off as a downer even if it is set in a mental hospital. The set by Dennis Maulden is once again a triumph, going from opulent ballroom to Zelda's hospital room in Asheville to a dingy newspaper office.
We meet F. Scott Fitzgerald in his office, opening mail and reading the artfully worded rejection letters from publishers. His submission "does not meet the needs of the magazine at this time." Editors are "unable to generate the enthusiasm for your work."
"Two more," he says bitterly, "for the wall of shame."
Things turn around quickly when a publisher says yes to "This Side of Paradise" and the novel takes off.
Zelda, young and beautiful, once was written about in a "very complimentary" piece in the Montgomery Advertiser. The fame and fortune she longs for she finds in Fitzgerald, the Yankee writer who becomes the most famous novelist of his day.
Lauren Kennedy (who played Shelby in "Steel Magnolias" on the Playhouse stage) achieves the breadth and depth of the role, from vulnerable and naïve young bride to flamboyant flapper to a fragile older woman adrift between reality and a land of imagination and memory.
Last seen as the gambler Sky Masterson in "Guys and Dolls" here, Jarrod Emick seems to be one of those actors who plays himself. If you look up "stoic" in the dictionary his picture is there.
The story, by Jack Murphy and Playhouse Artistic Director Vincent Marini, unfolds in flashback. The reporter Ben Simon (Ben Dibble) draws the story out of Zelda chapter by chapter in visits to her hospital room. "This is the longest conversation I've had about things I've forgotten in as long as I can remember," she says at one point. Ben is serious and at times seems as melancholy and emotionally damaged as his profile subject.
After a series of successes, Fitzgerald publishes "The Great Gatsby," which presumably will lead to even greater riches, badly needed given the way the couple drinks away the money he makes. "Gatsby" doesn't sell. Simon asks, what happened then? "That was the beginning of the end," Zelda answers.
In song and in Zelda's narrative, the play traces the fall, the turmoil of the couple's relationship, played out in sensational headlines of the Roaring Twenties.
"Famous people should be sat next to at dinner parties," she tells Simon, "not lived with. Anything that is real gets used up by being famous."
Fitzgerald's awkward and unsatisfying attempt to become a Hollywood screenwriter is the amusing comic relief of Act II."I could eat alphabet soup and s--- better dialogue," the author says as he reads a Hollywood script.

Emick's "Losing the Light" and "Waiting for the Moon" and Kennedy's "Remember" are second act highlights, too. Both actors are equal to the emotional and musical demands of the songs, and the ensemble cast adds incredible glitz to the flapper-era dance scenes.
The theme of "Zelda" is as old as a Greek drama and as fresh as Lindsay Lohan headlines. Poorly managed, fame is a dangerous thing.

"Zelda — An American Love Story" plays through Oct. 28, at Flat Rock Playhouse. Curtain: 8 p.m. Wednesday-Saturday; 2 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday. Tickets: $40; $38 senior/AAA; $22 students. Info: 828-693-0731, 1-866-732-8008 or www.flatrockplayhouse.org.