ZELDA Makes West End Debut, September 18

Cahoots Productions will present the West End debut of Zelda, written and performed by Kelly Burke and directed by Robert F. Gross running at the Trafalgar Studios from 18 September to 4 October with press night on 19 September.

With Scott Fitzgerald having just come out of copyright, a wave of Gatsby adaptations and the re-emergence of the dropped waistline, there is no better time to celebrate the brilliant, intoxicating woman who started it all, Zelda Sayre.

Based on the letters and fiction of America’s first flapper, Zelda has previously had a sell-out run at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Following runs at the Leicester Square and New End Theatres, Zelda ran site-specifically 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.

Kelly Burke was a finalist for the 2011 Off West End Award for Best Female Performer in Zelda at the Charing Cross Hotel. Kelly’s stage credits include As You Like It for Jagged Fence Productions, The Sluts of Sutton Drive, Blue Surge and InWorld at Finborough Theatre, Marie and Bruce at The Royal Court Theatre as part of the Wallace Shawn Festival, Avocado at the Kings Head Theatre, Much Ado About Nothing at Bartlett Theater, New York, Agnes of God at the Federal Theater, Denver, and Inherit the Wind at the Bug Theatre, Denver. Her television credits include Doctors and 4Surfing. Her radio credits include The Big Sleep, The Little Sister, and These Are The Times all for BBC Radio 4. 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, 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 work includes Frankenstein, The Three Musketeers at the Indiana Repertory Theatre, Six Days’ Drive at the Contemporary Theatre of Syracuse, Casting Off (w. composer Howard Pollack) and Idiot Apocalypse (will premiere in April 2013).