The Great, Great GATZ — Review
In terms of fresh criticism of Gatz, Elevator Repair Service’s read-through of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby which, with two intermissions and a dinner break, amounts to an eight-hour experience, there is not much I can add to the shout-from-the-rooftops adulation which Ben Brantley heaped on it over a decade ago, when he called it the most remarkable theatrical achievement of the century.
It’s back at the Public for what the company says will be its final New York run, and it is indeed one of the most tectonic-shifting, awe-inspiring stage works I’ll have ever seen.
It is a deeply durational one, and if the idea of spending six hours (the length of the piece itself) listening to Gatsby repels you: this is not for you. But the riches it holds! It is not novel to say Fitzgerald’s work is an epochal masterpiece, but what Elevator Repair Services does with it adds an unexpected element of drama: never approximating the piece itself through typical dramatization but rather capturing the ineffable aesthetic experience of being wholly immersed in the act of reading, itself an act of deeply personal creation.
It begins in a drab office space filled with Barton Fink-esque putrid grays and browns. An average-looking worker Scott Shepherd finds a copy of Gatsby and begins reading aloud. His narration is nothing special, if slightly bemused. Coworkers go about their business around him as his attachment to the book grows, holding down its pages as he writes with his other hand and rolling around in his chair while reading.
But then that attachment becomes more physical: an office-mate reading a Golf magazine (Susie Sokol) suddenly starts to sound a lot like the book’s Jordan Baker, and a loud noise in the story is matched by a boom just outside the office. By the time its narrator, Nick Carraway, arrives at the clandestine orgy hosted by his cousin-in-law Tom (Pete Simpson), he and the office worker have all but intertwined. (Though the other actors inhabit their roles, Shepherd reads directly from the book; every “he said / she said” left intact.) This continues apace until the fourth and final act, when the plot has overtaken the proceedings, and the piece becomes more a Brechtian take on Gatsby than as the borderline-reading it began.
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Fitzgerald’s 1925 opus is, of course, a gold mine in itself – a wise choice from the company – but combining it with Brecht’s contemporaneous notion of standing outside of a work to reach a thematic clarity beyond symbolic significance is genius. By the end, though Shepherd has fully embodied Carraway, his office worker’s (and thus Gatz’) relationship to the material becomes an exaltation of the unique reader-novel relationship; of the stories we consume and the characters we meet; the ownership of, and complicity in, their lives and emotions. There is a genuine sense of devastation and loss as he nears the end of this well-worn story that is nearly impossible to describe.
Other indelible moments: the moment Shepherd, as Nick, faces the audience to explain he’s only ever been drunk twice, thus embracing his character before the truly rapturous orgy scene, which is lit (by Mike Barton) like the internal spotlight our brain shines on its imaginations. The preamble to Gatsby’s (Jim Fletcher) first party being, not a rowdy pregame, but a quietly staged cleanup from that previous festivity. Each and every blowsy line reading by Annie McNamara, in a variety of roles. Simpson’s take on Tom Buchanan, not as a blow-hard polo star, but as an upwardly failing fraternity jackass. The oppressively humid lighting for the hotel room scene, at which point the set (by Louisa Thompson) is merely five chairs around a table; the air dense with dreadful potential. Myrtle’s (Laurena Allan) death scene rendered truly shocking in a mundanity amplified by the genius sound design, controlled onstage by Ben Williams. And each and every performance by its thirteen-member ensemble, directed by John Collins, and comprising Tory Vazquez, Frank Boyd, Vin Knight, Maggie Hoffman, Mike Iveson, and Ross Fletcher.
Gatz reaches, by design, the level of sublimity which other plays happily stumble into. It is a work of genius which quietly announces the depths of its unspeakable beauty, and the profundity of its journey, by the broken table clock facing the audience. When one faces art so directly, so boldly and so openly, time truly stands still.
Gatz is now in performance at the Public Theatre on Lafayette St through December 1, 2024 in New York City. For tickets and more information, visit here.