The Expatriates at the FRIGID Fest - Review.

March 14, 2009 – 12:43 am

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Review by Byrne Harrison

There is a certain propensity to glamorize the Jazz Age, especially the livesof its larger-than-life denizens. Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Parker - all invoke the image of something grand, yet all led fairly tragic lives. Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at 44. Zelda died in a fire eight years later. Hemingway shot himself. Dorothy Parker outlived them all, but dealt with suicide attempts and alcoholism.

This is the Jazz Age that The Beggars Group presents inThe Expatriates, in its latest incarnation as part of this year’s FRIGID New York Festival. First produced in 2000 at the New York Fringe Festival, the play has been rewritten and performed at various times. The latest version is described by The Beggars Group as the first movement in a four-part cycle exploring the nature of artistic creation by focusing on the lives of the artists of the Lost Generation. This ‘first movement’ uses the highs and lows of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s life as its framework.

Told in a hallucinatory and nonlinear way, The Expatriates is not for those who like to be told a story, start to finish, in a way that elucidates the intention of the playwright. Instead, it’s like archeology - viewing a few broken shards of a life and trying to recreate the civilization it came from. It’s an exciting and fascinating process.

Justin Sturges’ simple, spare set and dark, moody lighting accentuate the dream-like qualities of the play, as do the quick jumps in time and place. Under the watchful eyes of directors Randy Anderson and Harrison Williams, the play progresses in fits and starts - revealing slowly the lessons to be learned from Fitzgerald’s life and work.

The cast seems perfectly at ease with this unusual style of theatre. Excellent work is done all around, especially by Harrison Williams as Fitzgerald and Jenny Bennett, who shows excellent range as Dorothy Parker, Gertrude Stein, and Isadora Duncan. Morgan Lindsey Tachco does an excellent job as Zelda, especially in her more desperate moments. Preston Copley is very good as Ernest Hemingway, a bulwark compared to the disintegrating Fitzgerald. It would be interesting to see him do more with that role in future parts of The Expatriates’ cycle.

The Expatriates is an exciting and interesting piece of theatre. I look forward to seeing what The Beggars Group has in store as it continues to explore the darker moments of the Jazz Age, and the amazing art that came from the turmoil.

Developed by The Company?Written by Randy Anderson, Harrison Williams, Jenny Bennett?Directed by Randy Anderson, Harrison Williams?Lighting, Set, Sound Design: Justin Sturges?Costume Design: Meredith Mosely-Bennett

Featuring: Harrison Williams (F. Scott Fitzgerald), Morgan Lindsey Tachco (Zelda Fitzgerald), Preston Copley (Ernest Hemingway), Jenny Bennett (Dorothy Parker/Gertrude Stein/Isadora Duncan), Daniela Dakic(Sheila Graham/Lotti), Sarah Anderson (Sara Murphy), Randy Anderson (Gerald Murphy)

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The Expatriates! @ The Frigid Fest!

November 11, 2008 – 12:32 am

The Expatriates is a fast paced and physically charged drama about F. Scott Fitzgerald confronting other luminaries of his lifetime. Exploring the similarities of the lives he wrote and the life he lived, this show is sure to engage as it paints a literary genius barreling toward his demise.

Thursday February 26 @ 6pm

Saturday February 28 @ 8:30pm

Sunday March 1 @ 7pm

Monday March 2 @ 6pm

Sunday March 8 @ 5:30pm

At

The Kraine Theater – 85 East 4^th Street, New York NY 10003

Tickets are $15 and available / Smarttix at 212-868-4444 or online at www.FRIGIDnewyork.info

Check out the Beggars Group on the NYTheatre’s Podcast!

http://www.nytheatrecast.com/pcast/nythpod273.mp3

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Reading of The Expatriates II

October 25, 2008 – 11:07 pm

The Management Theater company has invited The Beggars Group to read The Expatriates II. Join us for an afternoon of drinks, snacks and culture.

Sunday November 9 @ 4:30pm

Under St. Marks Theater

94 St. Marks Place (between 1st Ave and Ave A)

Staring: HARRISON WILLIAMS, JENNY BENNETT, PRESTON COPLEY, MORGAN LINDSEY TACHCO, RANDY ANDERSON!

Make your reservation now! Seats are limited. Email mgmt.rsvp@gmail.com

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Guess Who’s Coming back!!!

September 3, 2008 – 9:02 pm

The cast of the October 2000 production of The Expatriates

Coming in February 2009, The Beggars Group will exhume the bones of it’s most produced play, The Expatriates! Being presented at the FRIGID FESTIVAL in NYC!

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The Expatriates

August 22, 2007 – 8:26 pm

Here is a review of The Beggars Group’s New York Fringe production in 2000. New play is coming!!!!

THE EXPATRIATES by Tim Cusack · August 21, 2000
F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at the age of 44. Zelda Fitzgerald perished in a fire at the age of 48. Ernest Hemingway shot himself at the age of 61. Two of Sarah Murphy’s sons succumbed at an early age. Dorothy Parker lived longer than any of them, but was suicidal and alcoholic for much of her life.This death penumbra darkens all of the characters in the Beggars Group production, The Expatriates. In fact the show takes a perverse glee in reminding us that death was the guest of honor at this Parisian bohemia’s parties from the start. Take the opening: Scott, Dotty, Ernest, Sarah and Zelda all emerge from a single coffin like clowns in some macabre circus. The effect is very funny and, needless to say, rather disturbing. These ghosts are exiled from us by more than distance. They are also in crisis. Zelda has dared to write a novel, or in the imagery of this production birthed a novel, that uses the lives of the Fitzgeralds’ inner circle as its seminal fluid. Director Elizabeth Maher and her colleagues play fast and loose with the truth around this event—Zelda’s novel, Save Me the Waltz, didn’t come into existence until 1932, after the Fitzgeralds had returned to the U.S.; the play implies that her book was never published, though it in fact was; and it’s doubtful that Dorothy Parker ever visited the couple in Paris. Obviously then Maher is after something other than documentary realism; she is crafting instead a meditation on women’s creativity and their right to claim literary immortality, one of the few antidotes to death’s obliteration. Zelda’s book splits the group asunder. Parker dismisses it as merely a manifesto. Hemingway takes potshots at her with his rifle in the garden. Sarah, on the other hand, lends support to her friend. At one point everyone literally tears the book to shreds. The women in this world are particularly fascinating for the choices they represent. Sarah, the wife of painter Gerald Murphy, has accepted her role as traditional helpmate/mother/hostess. Parker is the professional writer, but she is careful not to engage the boys on their own territory or make any grandiose claims for her talent. She limits her writing to short stories and what she self-deprecatingly refers to as “verse.” Zelda, on the other hand, refuses either category. She is impetuous, demanding, vain and quite possibly a genius. She is neither helpmate nor afraid to do battle in the arena of the novel with the men. The price for this is her marriage and her sanity; her reward, the continual fascination with her life and work. Maher’s production is full of wonderful expressionist touches from the costumes to the sound design, and her cast is uniformly solid. However, the high pitch at which much of the action has been staged ultimately grows wearisome. I started to wish for a dash of the restraint that made Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Parker touchstones for their era.

THE EXPATRIATES
by Tim Cusack · August 21, 2000

F. Scott Fitzgerald died of a heart attack at the age of 44. Zelda Fitzgerald perished in a fire at the age of 48. Ernest Hemingway shot himself at the age of 61. Two of Sarah Murphy’s sons succumbed at an early age. Dorothy Parker lived longer than any of them, but was suicidal and alcoholic for much of her life.This death penumbra darkens all of the characters in the Beggars Group production, The Expatriates. In fact the show takes a perverse glee in reminding us that death was the guest of honor at this Parisian bohemia’s parties from the start. Take the opening: Scott, Dotty, Ernest, Sarah and Zelda all emerge from a single coffin like clowns in some macabre circus. The effect is very funny and, needless to say, rather disturbing. These ghosts are exiled from us by more than distance.

They are also in crisis. Zelda has dared to write a novel, or in the imagery of this production birthed a novel, that uses the lives of the Fitzgeralds’ inner circle as its seminal fluid. Director Elizabeth Maher and her colleagues play fast and loose with the truth around this event—Zelda’s novel, Save Me the Waltz, didn’t come into existence until 1932, after the Fitzgeralds had returned to the U.S.; the play implies that her book was never published, though it in fact was; and it’s doubtful that Dorothy Parker ever visited the couple in Paris. Obviously then Maher is after something other than documentary realism; she is crafting instead a meditation on women’s creativity and their right to claim literary immortality, one of the few antidotes to death’s obliteration.

Zelda’s book splits the group asunder. Parker dismisses it as merely a manifesto. Hemingway takes potshots at her with his rifle in the garden. Sarah, on the other hand, lends support to her friend. At one point everyone literally tears the book to shreds. The women in this world are particularly fascinating for the choices they represent. Sarah, the wife of painter Gerald Murphy, has accepted her role as traditional helpmate/mother/hostess. Parker is the professional writer, but she is careful not to engage the boys on their own territory or make any grandiose claims for her talent. She limits her writing to short stories and what she self-deprecatingly refers to as “verse.” Zelda, on the other hand, refuses either category. She is impetuous, demanding, vain and quite possibly a genius. She is neither helpmate nor afraid to do battle in the arena of the novel with the men. The price for this is her marriage and her sanity; her reward, the continual fascination with her life and work.

Maher’s production is full of wonderful expressionist touches from the costumes to the sound design, and her cast is uniformly solid. However, the high pitch at which much of the action has been staged ultimately grows wearisome. I started to wish for a dash of the restraint that made Fitzgerald, Hemingway and Parker touchstones for their era.

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