Beautiful and Damned
Encyclopedia
- For the novel see The Beautiful and DamnedThe Beautiful and DamnedThe Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. The novel provides a portrait of the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. As with his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters are complex, especially in their...
Beautiful and Damned is a musical
Musical theatre
Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...
with a book by Kit Hesketh Harvey and music and lyrics by Les Reed
Les Reed
Les Reed O.B.E. is an English songwriter, musician and light orchestra leader.-Career:...
and Roger Cook
Roger Cook (songwriter)
Roger Cook is an English songwriter who has written many hits for other recording artists. He has also had a successful recording career in his own right.-Early life:Cook was born in Fishponds, Bristol, England...
.
Drawing its title from F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
's second novel
The Beautiful and Damned
The Beautiful and Damned, first published by Scribner's in 1922, is F. Scott Fitzgerald's second novel. The novel provides a portrait of the Eastern elite during the Jazz Age, exploring New York Café Society. As with his other novels, Fitzgerald's characters are complex, especially in their...
, it focuses on the turbulent relationship he shared with his wife Zelda
Zelda Fitzgerald
Zelda Sayre Fitzgerald , born Zelda Sayre in Montgomery, Alabama, was an American novelist and the wife of writer F. Scott Fitzgerald. She was an icon of the 1920s—dubbed by her husband "the first American Flapper"...
during the Jazz Age
Jazz Age
The Jazz Age was a movement that took place during the 1920s or the Roaring Twenties from which jazz music and dance emerged. The movement came about with the introduction of mainstream radio and the end of the war. This era ended in the 1930s with the beginning of The Great Depression but has...
. Young, stylish, and successful, they are the envy of high society
Upper class
In social science, the "upper class" is the group of people at the top of a social hierarchy. Members of an upper class may have great power over the allocation of resources and governmental policy in their area.- Historical meaning :...
friends who are unaware that behind their glamorous façade are two individuals doomed to tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
.
The West End
West End theatre
West End theatre is a popular term for mainstream professional theatre staged in the large theatres of London's 'Theatreland', the West End. Along with New York's Broadway theatre, West End theatre is usually considered to represent the highest level of commercial theatre in the English speaking...
production, directed and choreographed by Craig Revel Horwood
Craig Revel Horwood
Craig Revel Horwood is an Australian-British dancer, choreographer, and theatre director in the United Kingdom.-Biography:...
, opened on April 28, 2004 at the Lyric Theatre
Lyric Theatre (London)
The Lyric Theatre is a West End theatre on Shaftesbury Avenue in the City of Westminster.Designed by architect C. J. Phipps, it was built by producer Henry Leslie with profits from the Alfred Cellier and B. C. Stephenson hit, Dorothy, which he transferred from the Prince of Wales Theatre to open...
, where it ran until August 14. The cast included Michael Praed
Michael Praed
Michael Praed born Michael David Prince, 1 April 1960 in Berkeley, Gloucestershire) is a British actor, is probably best known for his role as Robin of Loxley in the British television series Robin of Sherwood, which attained cult status worldwide in the 1980s...
, Helen Anker
Helen Anker
Helen Anker, born in 1972 in Banbury, Oxfordshire, is an actress and singer who trained at the Royal Ballet School and Bird College. She is best known for playing Zelda Fitzgerald in the West End musical Beautiful and Damned, a role she first played at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford before...
, Jo Gibb
Jo Gibb
Jo Gibb is a Scottish theatre actress best known for her role of Rumpleteazer in the Cats video and as Pearl the Observation Car in Starlight Express...
, Susannah Fellows, and David Burt
David Burt
David Burt is a British actor, known primarily for his many and wide-ranging West End performances.Burt recently starred as the flamboyant Count Fosco opposite Yvette Robinson in Andrew Lloyd Webber's The Woman in White at the Palace Theatre and was featured as Captain Andy Hawks in Show Boat at...
.
Song list
- She's Over the Top and He's Under the Table
- I'm Dancing
- One of You Can Take Me Home Tonight
- Beautiful Magnolia
- Refuse to Be a Girl
- Little Miz Alabama
- Tomorrow
- Shooter's Shoes/Casey's Grill
- The Letters
- Beautiful and Damned
- Golden Days
- Princess of the Western World
- Tender is the Night
- So Long
- Living Well's the Only Way
- The Old World Shines Again
- Trouble
- Save Me the Waltz
- Being a Woman
- Even Now