Old Birds in a Gilded Cage at The 92nd St. Y

So Norman Mailer, George Plimpton and Norris Church (Mailer's sixth wife) took the stage to portray Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, respectively. The punchline? Apparently there wasn't one, as David Remnick, Tony Randall and anyone over 65 on the Upper East Side were herded into a sold-out auditorium at the 92nd St. Y two weeks ago.

"Even the Times didn't get more than one press pass," the publicist informed us, more dramatically than anything we'd see inside.

The play was an adaptation of the correspondence between Hemingway and Fitzgerald, and Fitzgerald and his wife. One had hoped the curtain would be drawn to reveal Mailer, musket in hand and mid-coitus, calling out to a native boy for a real glass of whiskey. Instead, Norman and George sat serenely at two mahogany desks center stage, though Mailer was wearing something vaguely safari, and Plimpton his "Princeton tie." ("In case you are confused," Plimpton quipped, "Norman is playing Hemingway.")

For the next hour or so we were treated to F. Scott's rise and fall, Zelda's nose-dive into insanity and a running I-told-you-so commentary by Ernest. There were some amazing one-liners?"I did not yet know Zelda," Hemingway wrote, reflecting back on the first time he'd met Fitzgerald, "so I did not yet know the terrible odds that were stacked against him." And F. Scott's retort to Zelda's accusation that he "had fallen to pieces" one night and hit her in the face after returning from a dinner at Princeton with the current undergraduates: "'No,' I said, 'the honor system had fallen to pieces, and that was an awful blow to me.'"

But more importantly we learned that Fitzgerald considered himself a complete failure at the end. That when he was at his lowest in Paris, he'd "wander into the Ritz bar to get my self-esteem back for half an hour, often with someone I'd never met before." Trying to write only made him feel worse. Soon the man whose sentimentality and "flawed dream world" (Hemingway's words) that had created the immortal Jay Gatsby and the green light was like a dying bird?"his love of flight was gone, and could only remember when it had been effortless." Fitzgerald's fame?the expectations of others and himself for his work?destroyed him as both an artist and a person. Happily, it seemed the same could not be said of the people onstage that night.

During a Q&A, an audience member asked the two men what they thought to be the real source of animosity between the Fitzgeralds. Mailer told a rambling anecdote about himself, disguised as a rambling anecdote about Lillian Hellman, and a particularly amusing dinner party. He then explained how he believed that F. Scott was threatened by Zelda sexually, afraid that he could never be "the best she'd ever had." Plimpton simply shrugged his shoulders, crossed his legs and added piffily, "I think he knew that she knew that he knew he was a pansy with hair on his chest."

The highlight was a query posed by a desperate women's studies major who had been told she'd find a great fatted calf awaiting her at 1395 Lexington. "Why haven't I ever seen a course offered on Zelda's work?" she wondered.

Mailer, who's genuinely hard of hearing, said, "Pardon?"

"I said, why have I never seen a course offered on Zelda's work?" the girl repeated even more vehemently.

Norris Church, a woman who, much like the character she played, has a string of adjectives to precede her name (author, actress, painter) but will always be known, for whatever reason, as her husband's wife, replied, "Because [Zelda's writing] wasn't that good." Then, more diplomatically (while adjusting her many necklaces), added, "That is, I don't think it could have stood the test of time."

Eventually it was over. The room burst into self-righteous applause and several people around me, one a reviewer, woke up. As my companion generously commented about the largely geriatric crowd, "At this age, when you dim the lights it's like putting a blanket over a birdcage."