'Great Gatsby' Onstage, With A White-Collar Twist

NPR.org: "Since its publication in 1925, F. Scott's Fitzgerald’s novel The Great Gatsby has captured the American imagination. The flamboyant story has been adapted for film, stage, television and even opera. But one ambitious New York theater company has decided to put every word of the novel onstage in a 6 1/2-hour adaptation that's been getting rave reviews.

The Public Theater's Gatz opens with a man in a blue shirt walking out onto a set that doesn't even vaguely evoke F. Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz age. It's the drabbest office imaginable: gray walls, beat-up furniture, a manual typewriter, an ancient computer.

The man tries several times to boot up that computer, all unsuccessful. Then, with a shrug, he pulls out a paperback copy of The Great Gatsby, and starts reading — aloud.

And for the next 6 1/2 hours — plus two intermissions and a dinner break — the audience is transported into the world of The Great Gatsby as the workers of this mysterious onstage office bring the novel to vivid life and, somehow, that guy in the blue shirt becomes Nick Carraway, Fitzgerald’s narrator, and the friend and confidant to self-made millionaire Jay Gatsby."