BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★

“Lauren Ward stands out as Scottie with an emotional and sensitive portrayal”

Much has been written about F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald – the iconic, glamorous and tragic ‘Golden Couple’ of the Jazz Age. Even without Fitzgerald’s novels, they need no introduction. The names Scott and Zelda have always remained the central figures of their era, epitomising its excesses. The focus is nearly always drawn to Scott’s heavy drinking and early death, and Zelda’s mental disorders and institutionalisation. Their story has become the template of the self-destructive side effects of creativity and fame, and their tragic marriage and career an irresistible subject for biographers. But their only daughter, born in 1926 at the height of her father’s early success, is probably the most reliable witness. And indeed, Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald was a vehement critic of biographers’ depictions which were invariably one dimensional.

It would be interesting to know what she would make of “Beautiful Little Fool”, the new musical by Mona Mansour (book) and Hannah Corneau (music and lyrics), which places Scottie centre stage, reflecting on her parents’ life from their first meeting up to their separate, sorrowful deaths. Scottie (Lauren Ward) is celebrating her forty-eighth birthday. She was always too young to sort out her parents’ lives, so now she is sorting out their archives. Mansour and Corneau have given her an easy task: what follows is a pretty simple potted history of the couple. Episodic and superficial. Interestingly, using a theatrical device that is sadly underexplored, Scottie periodically slips away from her narrative standpoint in the 1960’s to join them in the twenties and thirties and interact as an adult. Luckily, we are given the dates in the dialogue, as there is little else to evoke the time and setting. Corneau’s score reflects neither era, and pays little respect to the themes of Mansour’s script. ‘Nobody Parties Like Us’ opens the show, with the protagonists at mic stands wrestling with a pub-rock beat. By song number three, they seem to be stepping into a seventies power ballad – more Barry Manilow than Cab Calloway.

The dynamic lacks excitement and the band’s energy mirrors the unchanging pulse and pattern of the rhythms. Lyrically repetitive, they jar with the personalities singing them. But there is the crux – the characters themselves are under formed, merely scratching the surface of these multi-layered literary figures. Admittedly, the nature of musical theatre requires us to suspend our disbelief, but this is a real story about real people, and the belief comes crashing to the floor when a tortured genius of the jazz age reaches for the high belt.

The cast manage to rise above the material. Lauren Ward stands out as Scottie with an emotional and sensitive portrayal of a woman trying to make sense of her upbringing. The real-life Scottie had fewer complaints (“I didn’t consider it a difficult childhood at all. In fact, it was a wonderful childhood” she once remarked). David Hunter as F. Scott and Amy Parker as Zelda are in fine voice – particularly Parker who steps in as Zelda; usually played by composer and lyricist Corneau herself. There are moments when tensions run high and we get a very brief glimpse of the tempestuous relationship, but for the most part the emotional connection between F. Scott and Zelda is buried at the bottom of a whisky glass, topped with a dash of caricature and a twist of simplicity. We barely get a taste, and consequently learn little new.

Shankho Chaudhuri’s impressive, two-tiered set preserves the serious antiquity while still managing to recreate the party atmosphere when needed. But this concept doesn’t really transfer to the narrative. When we approach the twilight years, F. Scott has changed little. Hollywood broke him, but here we merely sense he is having a bad day at the office. The epilogue is drawn out, the emotional impact is cast out, and the sorrow and anguish is replaced by a sugary finale.

When Frances Scott “Scottie” Fitzgerald was born, Zelda emerged from the anaesthetic in a haze. “I’m drunk” she rambled, “Isn’t she smart… she has the hiccups. I hope it’s beautiful and a fool – a beautiful little fool”. These words reappeared later in F. Scott Fitzgerald’s ‘The Great Gatsby’ spoken by Daisy Buchanan. It’s the perfect title for a retrospective play that mixes biography with drama, told through the eyes of the daughter. “Beautiful Little Fool”, however, squanders the opportunity with a show that barely removes the blinkers and further veils its potential for insight with a musical that skims the surface without revealing what lies beneath.

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

Southwark Playhouse Borough

Reviewed on 22nd January 2026

by Jonathan Evans

Photography by Pamela Raith

MASTERCLASS

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

★★★★

“The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed”

If you break a hologram, the original image remains visible in each fragment, but the viewing angle for each piece is narrower, like looking through a smaller window. Every fragment shows the whole picture, but from a different perspective.

Tracy Letts’ intriguing play, “Mary Page Marlowe”, is constructed along similar lines. Carefully selected moments, some mundane and some pivotal, are patch-worked together in no particular order to paint a full, yet intimate, portrait of a woman. An “unexceptional” woman, according to the titular character herself. The experience for the audience, though, is quite the opposite. It is an exceptional and extraordinary play in which time is random. Five actors perform the role of Mary Page Marlowe, charting seventy years of her life over the course of eleven short scenes. A cradle to grave story (the baby Mary is represented by a doll – a less risky proposition than having a real baby onstage as in the premiere nine years ago in Chicago) that spirals around the life of Mary Page – along with her three husbands, two children, alcoholic mother, palliative nurse, therapist, lover… and so on.

We first see her explaining how her divorce will affect and uproot her children, before we flip back to her bright and buoyant schooldays, before fast forwarding to her twilight years. She is then a baby, mewling and puking; and then the lover, sighing like a furnace. There are indeed reflections on Shakespeare’s seven stages of life, albeit as though the bard had thrown his folio into the air and let the pages fall haphazardly around him.

Each scene is succinct and stand alone in its own right; with outstanding, natural performances from the entire cast. The common thread is often missing, however, and we feel that we are not watching the same woman in different stages of her life, but many people’s stories. The distancing of emotional connection that this results in is compensated for, however, by the ingenious structure and Matthew Warchus’ sublime direction. Staged in the round, it emphasises the concept that past, present and future are as one. When the telephone rings at the end of one scene, the weight of its significance is truly felt because we have already seen what comes after.

Each Mary is highly watchable. Alisha Weir’s twelve-year-old Mary is a convincing mix of obstinance and innocence whose rose-tinted view of life is already eroded by her late teens: Eleanor Worthington-Cox captures the ambiguity of hope versus disillusionment in denial. The more Mary ages, the stronger the characterisation. Rosy McEwen, as Mary the adulteress, is a personality to be reckoned with, while Andrea Riseborough lights up the stage every time she appears with her brutally honest energy and physicality, steering Mary on a crash course off the rails. Many people may be drawn to this show by the casting of Susan Sarandon, but the play is, by no means, a vehicle for starry casting. Sarandon has as little stage time as the others, and she uses it as efficiently. Poised and in complete control, Sarandon evokes regret and sadness with a stoicism that matches her presence.

The supporting cast are uniformly excellent, providing light and shade where needed. Kingsley Morton’s schoolfriend, Connie, is a very funny breath of fresh air. Melanie La Barrie’s nurse is wryly comic but wise. A wisdom that is perhaps missing from Mary’s mother, grippingly portrayed by Eden Epstein. The moods are heightened by Hugh Vanstone’s sensitive lighting, but occasionally dampened by some overlong scene changes.

Despite all, however, Letts’ storytelling is a bit of a puzzle and, at times, hard work. The scrambled record of events can be distracting and the true hold on our attention is sometimes out of reach. We are never really let into the life of Mary Page Marlowe. The play hides as much as it reveals, which is part of its charm, but it is also frustratingly inconsequential. Letts wants us to question how much we can really know a person – even ourselves. We are teased into wanting to find out the answer, but left hanging. However, the meaninglessness (for want of a better word) is, in turn, inconsequential. We are won over by the truly mesmerising ensemble cast.

Tag Archives: Lauren Ward

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

★★

Southwark Playhouse Borough

BEAUTIFUL LITTLE FOOL

Southwark Playhouse Borough

★★

“Lauren Ward stands out as Scottie with an emotional and sensitive portrayal”