‘The Last Flapper’ @ Belle Sauvage
—Hannah Kneen
Dallas-based actress Catherine DuBord brings Zelda Fitzgerald to vivid life in The Last Flapper, a one-woman show about the wife of American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Based on Zelda’s letters and writings, the play was written by William Luce and adapted by DuBord, whose interest in Zelda and this part goes back some twenty years. The Last Flapper is the inaugural production of DuBord’s new theater company Belle Sauvage. It plays in Dallas through June 11 (at Theatre Three’s downstairs space, Theatre Too), and travels to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival this August.
I must say, I think it’s all off to a great start.
DuBord has put together a wonderful production. The story takes place in a mental hospital on the last day of Zelda’s life. She has come in for her psychiatry appointment to find her doctor is absent for the day. Alone, she imagines how her doctor would treat her, counting backwards from 100 as he often required of her. But instead of relaxing mindlessly, she revisits episodes of her life and asks the questions that no one else did.
Through a series of flashbacks we see how the light and life of a young girl was stifled and cut down over time. Her relationship with her husband raises questions about the amount of control she had over her own life, as well as her complicated love for Fitzgerald and his issues with drinking and plagiarism—of her work. It certainly made me wonder how many of Zelda’s problems were simply caused by the attitudes of the time in which she lived. That’s scary. I think one of my favorite things about this funny and heartbreaking play is that whenever Zelda discovers something about herself she goes over and corrects her psychiatrist’s file with a new word to define her. By the end, she has a lovely new picture of who she really is.
DuBord’s performance is gloriously both erratic and sane by turns. She travels through the stages of Zelda’s life with skill and grace, moving from excitable, scattered teenager to solitary, wounded woman. My heart broke for Zelda many times over the course of the play, but by the end—when she had found her words and greeted a new understanding of herself—I felt absurdly proud of her journey.
Director Lydia Mackay does a very good job pulling the play together and regardless of the challenges faced by producing a play on two different continents, the design elements serve the play well. With a minimal set and costume, the play was focused on the words and the acting. Lighting designer Landry Stickland used subtle lighting changes to cue the audience for each flashback; it helped guide us through the story, but never distracted us. Sound designer John Flores kept to a similar plan of minimal but functional design to serve the play. It is not a large production, but to tell this story it really shouldn’t be.
I don’t wonder why DuBord was so intent on producing The Last Flapper. The writing is fantastic and the character deliciously multifaceted. It is clearly a story that needs to be told and DuBord wholeheartedly throws herself into the role to give Zelda a voice.
In play notes, DuBord adds that “This play is incredibly timely. Beyond just empowering a strong woman, largely marginalized in the history books, to tell her story, ‘The Last Flapper’ is relevant to the current moment because we are still wrestling with questions about a woman’s right to choose her own path, to say ‘no’ to those in power and to make choices regarding her own medical health.”
WHEN: June 1-11
WHERE: Theatre Too at Theatre Three, Dallas (Edinburgh run: August 4-19, 2023, performing with Greenside at Riddle's Court)
WEB: http://bellesauvage.us/
