The scene is set with an archive with walls of books, papers, boxes and table lamps. Here Scottie Fitzgerald, daughter of Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald, muses on her parents’ short lives, and her own.
They were the golden couple of the 1920s, beautiful, outrageous and drunk. Zelda, in a glitzy black sequinned outfit, fills the stage in a commanding performance by Amy Parker. As well as singing with an impressive range she laughs, screams and dances on tables.
‘Nobody parties like us,’ Zelda says but Scottie remembers the broken glass and the vomit. The title comes from something said by Zelda to her baby daughter, that she hoped she would be a ‘beautiful little fool’ – the best thing a girl could be in the world was beautiful and ignorant. Scott Fitzgerald later used the line in The Great Gatsby. That makes this production into Scottie’s story – sort of. In fact she is a guide and observer, Lauren Ward does her best to make a character interesting who is cast to be dowdy in contrast to her resplendent parents.
If this musical has a point it is that Zelda’s talent was subsumed under that of her husband, they both lived the life but he took all the best material for himself. She contributed to stories that were published, but his name went on them. She was published but, in a telling scene, he criticises her lack of industry: she has the ideas but won’t put in the labour to make them live. This certainly rings true, he might have handed in his manuscripts two years late, but he got them in.
Instead she throws herself into twelve hour dancing classes, painting and writing. She was labelled as schizophrenic for her erratic behaviour, ‘I was never built to last’ is one of her more memorable songs.
There are some good numbers here but the lyrics are repetitive. It may be that apart from presenting these live-fast-die-young, flawed characters on stage in all their finery, there isn’t much left to say.
There is no dramatic tension here – even Zelda’s incarceration in a mental institution is treated as a spat between them as to whether or not she will go, not an agonized decision by her husband about whether he should let her suicidal behavior continue or should get what they considered then to be medical help.
The problem is that the tone is set with the archive where characters can riffle through boxes and read out letters they wrote to each other. Despite the admitted glitz and energy of the performers it is all too factual, making Beautiful Little Fool more a biopic than a musical.
Venue: Southwark Borough
Music and Lyrics: Hannah Corneau
Book: Mona Mansour
Cast: David Hunter, Amy Parker, Lauren Ward, David Austin-Barnes. Jasmine Hackett
Duration: I hour 40 minutes no interval
Until: 28 February 2026