Zelda - Trafalgar Studio 2
Preview by Lizzie Guilfoyle
BASED on the letters and fiction of America’s first flapper, Zelda runs at Trafalgar Studio 2 for a strictly limited season – from September 18 to October 4, 2012.
Zelda has previously had a sell-out run at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and following runs at the Leicester Square and New End Theatres, a site-specific production was performed in a bedroom at the Charing Cross Hotel under the direction of Ché Walker.
Zelda Sayre is the belle of Alabama, the outrageous good-time girl who captures the heart and imagination of novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald. Their life together is one great party, from the madness of Jazz Age New York to the gin-soaked glamour of the Riviera. Then Zelda takes up writing herself — and more than her marriage begins to crack up.
Zelda is written and performed by Kelly Burke and directed by Robert F. Gross.
Kelly Burke was a finalist for the 2011 Off West End Award for Best Female Performer in Zelda at the Charing Cross Hotel. Her stage credits include As You Like It (Jagged Fence Productions), The Sluts of Sutton Drive and Blue Surge (Finborough Theatre), Marie and Bruce (Royal Court Theatre, part of the Wallace Shawn Festival), Avocado (King’s Head Theatre), Much Ado About Nothing (Bartlett Theater, New York), Agnes of God (Federal Theater, Denver), and Inherit the Wind (Bug Theatre, Denver).
Her radio credits include The Big Sleep, The Little Sister and These Are The Times all for BBC Radio 4, while on television, she has appeared in Doctors and 4Surfing. Her other writing includes an adaptation of John Moncure March’s The Wild Party, which was performed at RADA and the short film Everything Before Us.
Robert F. Gross’ directing credits include Zelda at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Vassa Zheleznova, Symphony of Rats, The Empire Builders, Absent Friends and over forty other productions as director of the Bartlett Theater, New York. He has been dramaturg at Opera Memphis, Playmakers Repertory Company and American Theater Company, and Director of Theater at Hobart and William Smith Colleges.
As a playwright, his work includes Frankenstein and The Three Musketeers (Indiana Repertory Theatre), Six Days’ Drive (Contemporary Theatre of Syracuse), Casting Off (with composer Howard Pollack) and Idiot Apocalypse, which premieres in April 2013.
Tickets: £12.50 to £24.50 (£12.50/£15 concessions) – available at the ATG Box Office on 0844 871 7632 or online at www.atgtickets.com/venues/trafalgar-studios/. For group bookings call 0844 871 7644 and for access bookings 0844 871 7677.
Times: Monday to Wednesday at 7.45pm; Wednesday and Thursday matinees at 3pm; Press Night (September 19) at 7pm.
Running Time: 70 minutes.