The Last Romantic:
As befits a romantic, F. Scott Fitzgerald died young–or youngish. Ravaged by years of alcoholism, he was 44 when his heart gave out in a Hollywood bungalow in 1940. His books were out of print. His money was gone. His glittering, beloved schizophrenic wife was back east in an insane asylum. Still, Fitzgerald kept writing, turning out short stories (which were not as good as the ones he wrote in his best years, before the Crash of ’29) and screenplays; he even contributed material to Gone With the Wind. He was also at work on what he felt would be his last novel, a work modeled on the life of the late, great movie mogul Irving G. Thalberg.
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The first act of The Last Romantic is set in a seedy hotel room in or around Asheville, North Carolina, in 1935. Fitzgerald has retreated there to write, battle his alcoholism (unsuccessfully), and sift through the ashes of his life. It’s late summer, and one can feel the approach of winter in every word Fitzgerald utters. “In the real dark night of the soul,” he mutters, “it is always three o’clock in the morning.” Then he cracks open another bottle and takes a swig. This is the dark side of Fitzgerald, the broke, lost, exhausted man Fitzgerald wrote about in his sometimes harrowing, sometimes whiny autobiographical piece “The Crack-Up,” published in Esquire in the mid-30s.
Webb is now performing at a safer distance from the audience, on the Next Theatre’s stage. And the first half of the play isn’t quite as devastating. For one thing, Webb’s performance feels more varied: this Fitzgerald doesn’t seem so doomed. For another, this time around there’s a second act to his life–in Hollywood.
