At Six-Plus Hours, Stage Take On ‘Gatsby’ A Great One Indeed

by Chris Jones

How long would it take you to read a great American novel? Could you knock off, say, the entire text of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” in a little more than eight hours, a trio of rest breaks included?

Before Friday, I would have said that was impossible. But thanks to “Gatz” by the New York-based Elevator Repair Service, hundreds of Chicagoans did so this weekend at the Museum of Contemporary Art. This wasn’t so much “One City, One Book” as “One City, One Book, One Unbelievably Long and Brilliant Show.” And you know, among the truly dizzying number of ideas and emotions that this piece, which sports one of the longest running times in the history of theatrical entertainment, sends scurrying around your skull is the growing realization that “Gatsby” says a lot more about Chicago, its Midwestern environs and its complicated people than you probably remember.

The idea of an eight-hour show (actual time is 61/2 hours) might fill you with dread. It sent me scurrying to remember if I’d experienced anything comparable. Both parts of “Angels in America” came close. In the 1990s, I saw Robert LePage’s marathon “The Seven Streams of the River Ota.”

But nothing quite like this. “Gatsby” had long been vaguely part of my consciousness. But it’s now gained a new centrality that I don’t think will ever fully diminish. That’s one of the benefits of such a long show. You make an investment. You’re taken beyond the role of observer and into that Holy Artistic Grail—mutual participation.

This despite the very simplest of premises.

A normal-looking, paper-pushing guy, stuck in a pointless bureaucratic office in what seems like the early 1980s, gets bored. He picks up the novel. And he reads every last word. With the help of a few co-workers who start playing all the parts.

That’s it.

On the surface, this office and the people in it have nothing to do with the context or the themes of the novel. They are simply a random group of people performing a book that one of them happens to have started reading.

But American life is never adequately expressed on the surface. In fact, parallels seem to spring from every crevice of the theater. That sleazy, arrogant, ’80s-looking guy (brilliantly played by Gary Wilmes) is a perfect Tom, just as that quiet office mystery (Victoria Vazquez) makes an elusive Daisy. The self-assured woman in the office who doesn’t do much (Susie Sokol) makes a complex Jordan. The mysterious boss with the cold, sad-eyed gaze (Jim Fletcher) is, of course, Gatsby. And that computer nerd? Nick, of course. As played by Scott Shepherd, he’s at once our reluctant way into the piece and, as Fitzgerald intended, the consummate unreliable narrator.

The greatest strength of this piece, directed with eye-popping precision by John Collins and happily unafraid of the Fitzgerald’s oft-ignored sense of comic absurdity, stems from its understanding of one neglected theatrical truth. If you are working with a great piece of literature, its power will seep out even of the most seemingly disconnected world. Like yours. When you read it.

In performance a prismatic book like “Gatsby” can work far better when you quit trying to inadequately represent its colossal imaginative world, and, instead, stage something in total contrast that doesn’t so much stage the book as free it. With very few exceptions, that’s not something Hollywood understands.

But isn’t it better not to see Gatsby’s mansion and concentrate on the characters’ pain, optimism, mystery and ambivalence? That way everything stays in your head in an invigorating swirl.

It’s just a shame more people didn’t get to see the swirl. The Fitzgerald estate has limited where and when this show can be seen. But they signed off on Chicago. So bring it back. The revolutionary “Gatz” belongs in a city that revolutionized how people stage novels in the theater.

View the original article on the Chicago Tribune website here .