Gatsby author inspires musical

They were one of the most indulgent celebrity couples of the Twenties. Now the glittering yet tragic lives of Zelda and F Scott Fitzgerald have been dramatised for a major new West End musical.

Beautiful And Damned stars Michael Praed as the American author of The Great Gatsby and Helen Anker as his wife Zelda - an author, ballerina and painter.

In his novels The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful And The Damned, Fitzgerald wrote accurate yet devastating portraits of wealthy society people at play. Fitzgerald, an alcoholic, and his wife experienced that life with a dizzying routine of big spending and heavy partying.

Their glamorous, bitter-sweet lives make them an obvious subject for a major musical. Top song writers Les Reed and Roger Cook have been drafted in to provide the memorable tunes.

Fitzgerald dubbed the high living Twenties the "Jazz Age" - he described it as an "age of excess" - and Zelda was its star hostess. But the couple were blighted by alcohol, debt, affairs and illness, with Zelda suffering mental problems.

Fitzgerald was dead of a heart attack at 44, believing he had been a failure. His wife died eight years later in a fire, aged 48.

Although he experienced fame and luxury as well as financial crisis, Fitzgerald was aware of the hollowness of wealth. In the Great Gatsby he wrote of a wealthy couple who "smashed up things and creatures, and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made".

His observations of the rich at play could easily apply to today's top celebrities. He once wrote: "They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves."

Former Dynasty and Robin Of Sherwood star Praed is being reunited with Anker after they appeared together in the show Contact. David Burt and Susannah Fellows play Zelda's parents, Judge and Minnie Sayr.

Beautiful And Damned opens at the Lyric Theatre, Shaftesbury Avenue, on 10 May after previewing from 28 April.