Monday, November 10, 2008
A 'Gatsby' greater than sum of its parts
CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Stage: "That said, it was not the state of the economy that was on the minds of director John Collins and his New York-based experimental ensemble, Elevator Repair Service, when they began work on 'Gatz,' the marathon theatricalized 'reading' of the complete text of Fitzgerald's haunting tale about this country's psychic landscape. The show -- which will be presented three times this week at the Museum of Contemporary Art Theatre (a co-production with the Chicago Humanities Festival) and runs more than seven hours, including two intermissions and a dinner break --was set in motion in 1999, when an associate brought the book to one of the company's work sessions."
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I read THE GREAT GATSBY last year and absolutely loved it. However a seven hour show does seem a bit long. I wonder how you keep an audience member's attention for that long. But even more how do you rehearse and tech such a long extravagant show? Furthermore THE GREAT GATSBY is a classic work of literature and I don't it translates to anything beyond the book itself. The language used is the key point and it seems impossible to adapt it and still have the classic lines and phrases that make the book so popular. Apparently is production does it via a narrator but from an artistic standpoint this is a rather cheap trick. All in all this seems like a very sketch production and I'm curious to see how the audience reacts to it.
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