Monday, September 18, 2006
'The Great Gatsby' gets the full treatment
Star Tribune: "It isn't without precedent, this idea of reading straight out of 'The Great Gatsby.' During the author's centennial in 1996, dozens of performers read the entire book in a marathon at the Fitzgerald Theater in St. Paul, audiences popping in at their leisure. And comedian Andy Kaufman challenged crowds to stay put while he picked up the book and read from it during his act. Most of the time, they walked out."
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2 comments:
I must say, I like the concept for the show. And since people will sit for 12 hours to watch an abridged film version of J.R.R. Tolkein's Lord of the Rings, they might just be willing to sit through 7 hours to see an unabridged version of another classic.
More interesting to me though is the rights conflicts the company is running into. It seems odd that both productions are repeatably trying to be in the same market at the same time. Are there just that few venue options? Is there some commonality to the producing companies that they would try to be in the same cities at the same time? Or is one just trying to block the other?
It also seems odd that some agreement could not be reached to stage both an "abridged" and an "unabridged" version of the material in the same town at the same time. Most major works are available as audiobooks in the same market. Why not the same for performances. Most likely, there is a significantly different audience interested in a 7 hour production than in a traditional length one.
Never cut a classic. The idea of an cut version of "The Great Gatsby" defeats the work. There are few books that I would truley stand up to protect, and this is noe of them. I would love to see a full version on stage. Gatsby could be the first book I fell in love with, so maybe I'm a bit biased. On the other hand, to get butts in the seats, Big Names=big bucks. Do the classics... do them well!
- Julie
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