The Expatriates

The Expatriates, playing as part of the Frigid Festival, aims to bring to life the vanished age of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald through a non-chronological sequence of scenes in the author's life among the literati and glitterati with whom he drank, wrote, and fornicated. Unfortunately, a wishy-washy Fitzgerald (Harrison Williams) and a hard-to-understand Zelda (Morgan Lindsey Tachco) left me underwhelmed, while strained staging and poor pacing prevented the script's sometimes evocative repartee from blooming. The versatile Jenny Bennett is amusing as Gertrude Stein, Isadora Duncan, and Dorothy Parker, but the gangly Preston Copley makes a colorless Ernest Hemingway; he'd probably be great in Jimmy Stewart roles, but doesn't make any sense as Papa H. Other small supporting turns score better, but with few sparks in its engine and no sure hand at the tiller the play veers off course before it can ever get a fix on its twinkling stars.