• news
• biography
• press
• gallery
• shows
• about
• contact

The Vegetable; or, From President to Postman (1975)

Intro

An Oxford Playhouse Co. production and British premiere of a play by F. Scott Fitzgerald, performed during a regional tour and at Oxford Playhouse (early 1975).

Overview

Humble railway clerk Jerry Frost is sneered at by his overbearing wife, Charlotte, for apparently lacking the go-getting, self-improving impulses of more successful Americans; she compares him to a vegetable. 

As he gradually reveals his aspirations, Jerry finds himself bizarrely torn between the desire to be either president or postman.  In a series of fantasies, he embraces both roles, with drastically disparate consequences. 

Charlotte and her manipulative sister, Doris, are among the people who trouble Jerry's dreams, as well as his waking hours.

Cast

Crew

Deputy Stage Manager: Barbara Arnold
Company Stage Manager: Buzz Burrows
Wardrobe Assistants: Angela Butterfield and Vivienne Jenkins
Sound: Raymond Cross
Set and Lighting Designer: John Haile
Director: Nicholas Kent
Assistant Stage Managers: Stephen Rayment and Claire Sandford
Wardrobe Supervisor: Maggie Scobble
Costume Designer: Frances Tempest
Movement: Gillian Gregory

Notes

This revival of The Vegetable was presented by the Oxford Playhouse Company.  As the theatre programme pointed out, it was the play's 'first production in the original text since the 1923 fiasco', when the playwright, F. Scott Fitzgerald, walked out of the first performance, after the audience became confused by the events on stage.  Thankfully, The Vegetable met with a more appreciative response from audiences in 1975!

Zoe also worked with the Oxford Playhouse Company on a revival of Kiss Me Kate (1975).

Press coverage

Impressed by her performance, The Stage described Zoe, in the role of Doris, as a 'peroxided, parrot voiced Twenties cutie'!