<b>THE FITZGERALDS OF ST. PAUL</b> Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Through November 24
THE FITZGERALDS OF ST. PAUL Andrews Theatre/Irish Classical Theatre Company

Pair up a schizophrenic from the Confederate aristocracy and an ambitious Princeton grad from an impoverished Minnesota family and you have the face of The Jazz Age, from the glory days to the downfall.
That’s F. Scott Fitzgerald and his wife. Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald, parents of Scottie Fitzgerald.
He’s probably best known for “The Great Gatsby,” “Tender is the Night” and one which tells the tale of the times, “The Beautiful and Damned.”
There were also innumerable magazine articles and some Hollywood scribbling.
That part of his writings reflects L.A. residence with writer Sheilah Graham, with Zelda in a psych center.
There isn’t any particular focus on another place Fitzgerald lived, Buffalo, NY, where his father worked, performing badly because of his own drinking.
They lived in the Lenox Hotel and then, most notably, in a house which still exists in Allentown and Scott attended elementary school in Holy Angels and Nardin Academy.
He left Buffalo at the age of 12, leaving memories to friends and for his eventual books, driven back to St. Paul by his father’s problems.
Fitzgerald wrote a lot because he needed the money, cash to pay for travels with Zelda, booze with Zelda, mental hospital care for Zelda and education and life for daughter Scottie.
Live fast, die young is an old slogan applicable to both, Scott at 44 of a heart attack brought on by booze and Zelda at 47 in a mental hospital fire.
It’s a wonderful tale, although interest in the couple shifts up and down.
Christie Baugher is taking another look at the doomed couple, as the author of book, music and lyrics for <b
The show is getting a pre-New York City opening in the Irish Classical Theatre’s Andrews Theatre.
The story is told and sung by Scott (Jewell Wilson Bridges) and Zelda (Shannon O’Boyle), with the music occasionally straining voices.
The show was a little rough on Opening Night because there hadn’t been many run-throughs before then.
For the ICTC, the production is different because it has a large stage to hold the band and an on-stage wardrobe closet, jutting so far out into the space that the vision from some seats is poor.
The songs and music are really important to the story.
It’s somewhat like those operas where everything is sung, rather than mixed with dialogue.
Scott and Zelda meet in music in her Alabama hometown.
He’s hot after her while her family doesn’t feel he’s of their class, even with that Princeton degree and the New Jersey school was always the most southern of the Ivy League.
We collide through their lives, the good years and the bad years.
Scott tells Zelda, “I can make you live forever” while also admitting “I can’t write when I’m drunk.”
There’s no real attempt to deal with their problems and their goals.
Money management was never a sterling quality, as when Scott arrives singing “I Brought the Band” and he had.
Then, they go off on yet another of their extended, expensive trips, singing “Havana.”
It’s a pretty good band and the music isn’t bad although Baugher doesn’t seem fixed in any particular segment of music in the Fitzgerald era.
So, is “The Fitzgeralds of St. Paul” worth seeing?
Absolutely.
Partially, it’s so you can say: I saw it before opening in New York.
Partially because it’s yet another angle on a major figure in American literature who created indelible characters and left behind a word used to describe someone or a lifestyle, described derisively as “Gatsbyesque.”
One song in “The Fitzgeralds of St. Paul” beautifully describes the life: “Ain’t Life a Show?”

A.W.