Some 15 years after establishing and developing their brand as an experimental, movement-based devising theatre, the New York-based theatre company Elevator Repair Service took it into their collective heads to challenge themselves by creating GATZ, a verbatim staging of F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby* (not to be confused with the ‘verbatim theatre’ genre that replicates the words, rhythms and cadences of people telling their own stories, usually of profound life-changing experiences). In 2008 they staged William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1928) and the following year they decided to complete a trilogy with something by Ernest Hemingway. Having canvassed his oeuvre they opted for his first novel, The Sun Also Rises, written in 1926.

Every generation has its sub-culture of drop-out intellectuals, often drawn to the indolent rich who act as patrons, either officially or by default, and writings about them invariably profile writers. In the 1920s such elements of what has been described as ‘the lost generation – decadent, dissolute, and irretrievably damaged by World War I – were drawn to Paris. Hemingway’s observations of them are regarded as a ‘roman a clef’.

In principle I applaud the socio-political efficacy of warts-and-all truth-telling about human flaws, frailties and vulnerabilities in theatre, finding such an approach much more powerful than polemic. The question is, what makes revealing such lives and stories on stage compelling if the characters are boringly self-indulgent?

While the text is not the entire novel word-for-word, every word spoken is from the novel. The setting (David Zinn) is a realistic bar, its long table-tops festooned with glasses of wine and booze bottles. Here the characters move seamlessly from bar to café to bar as the story – largely narrated in the past tense by Jake Barnes (Mike Iveson) – unfolds. Jake’s focus is Robert Cohn (John Collins; also the director), an ex-college boxer and Jew. His Jewishness is mentioned often, to no apparent purpose and pejoratively by one especially nasty character. While the text mentions a flattened nose, no attempt is made to replicate this; nor will a woman’s clearly described bobbed hair be visually apparent. It all looks more 1950s (post WW II) than 1920s.  

Robert turns out to be rather pathetically dependent on Jake when it comes to deciding where to go and what to do – which is largely a question of which bar and what drink. When Jake, as narrator, comments that Robert’s female companion, Frances (Lindsay Hockaday) realises she is “losing her looks” she eyeballs the audience and we laugh. This seems to presage a metatheatrical level of contemporary commentary on the text but no, it’s a one-off.

“Don’t you ever get the feeling your life is going by you and you’re not really living it?” tends to provoke the counter question, “When is the substantive play actually going to start?” Robert thinks all will change if they go to South America – but they don’t and nothing ever comes of that set up.  

An interaction between Jake and a sexy Georgette (Maggie Hoffman), who (spoiler alert) has missing teeth and a disease ‘down there’, plays out as if Jake is pretending to be impotent as a way of fobbing her off. Only after researching online do I realise his impotence was caused by the war – but if this detail is in the play, none of my trio of companions caught it. Without that sense of poignancy (and even with it, actually) it seems like an authorially misogynist sequence.

The tedium of the (in)action is somewhat alleviated by the clever sound-effects whereby we hear wine poured from an obviously empty bottle. Despite the multiple repetitions, it is always welcome.

The arrival of English aristocrat Lady Brett Ashley (Lucy Taylor) ups the dramatic ante somewhat as we realise Jake is in love with her but doomed to be the dependable friend while Robert is caught like a possum in her headlights.

‘The Select’ turns out to refer to Café Select, one of the preferred haunts of the sybaritic-cum-dissolute gang – not least because the improbably-name Count Mippipopolous (Vin Knight) can be relied on to supply exquisite champagne. (Disclaimer: that may not be the venue in which this actually happens but it’s part of the story and staging that one café/bar is much like another.)

During the interval, after 80 minutes of the 3 hour 10 minute show (including interval), I discover many friends and colleagues are extremely disenchanted with both the story of these tedious people in Paris and the pedestrian way of telling it, top-heavy as it is with past-tense narration.

The next two-thirds or so become much more lively by comparison. Nevertheless claims that this is a “unique approach to theatre” cannot be sustained given the theatrical creativity we regularly witness in New Zealand – and while we have often welcomed very long shows from Robert LePage et al at NZ Festival, it is debatable whether this earns it keep.

There are more theatrical tricks of offer in the second two-thirds, capped by a fly-fishing sequence and two bullfights, but what sustains our interest (in my book) is the deepening of characters and relationships. The vilifying of Robert by Brett’s latest lover, Mike Campbell (Pete Simpson) is compelling in its awfulness, as is the portrait of emasculation embodied in Robert’s story (a recurring theme in Hemingway’s work). Brett herself is brilliantly observed and played, allowing us to be captivated by her over and over before we glimpse her tragic inner loneliness.

The high point for me is Susie Sokol’s depiction of the 19 year-old toreador, Pedro Romero. This Spanish version of masculinity stands as a telling comparison to the American and English characters, with no editorial judgement offered as to which is preferable. (Investigating ‘masculinity’ is another Hemingway concern.) Yes, the casting of a horned trestle table as the bull is clever, but it’s the human drama that wins the day.

Overall The Select (The Sun Also Rises) is a play of one third and two thirds, with the final third winning on the day.

Here is a link to them taking about their process. 
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*For the record, Ken Duncum’s stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby premiered at The Court Theatre in 2009 and a revised version was produced by Circa Theatre in 2010. 

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