‘Elevator’ Is Looking Up With Hemingway

by Jay Handelman

Elevator Repair Service is an unusually named theater troupe from New York, which may be perfectly appropriate for a company that does the unusual on stage.

Thursday night, the company offered the workshop premiere of the first part of its still-in-development adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” The 18-year-old company gained international attention in recent years for its lengthy transformation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby,” in which every word is heard on stage.

The new show doesn’t go into the same amount of detail, but there’s a lot of Hemingway on the stage. Though the company has asked that the workshop production not be reviewed during the Ringling International Arts Festival, which commissioned the work, audiences who have tickets for the sold-out for performances are clearly in for a treat.

I’ve never been much of a fan of Hemingway’s work, but the troupe’s clever and innovative performance makes me want to haul out my worn copy that barely held my attention in high school.

With sound effects and a lot of props, the company sends the audience to Paris in the 1920s for the first part of Hemingway’s novel, and the Sarasota performances include a little bit of the second part, which shifts the action to Spain, beginning with a bullfight, in which a matador taunts a bull shaped out of a table.

There is great passion and affection evident on stage and audiences are in for a treat for the weekend. The performance runs about 100 minutes, longer than most of the hour-long shows featured at the festival. That just means there’s more to enjoy. But that’s not a review.

Additional, but sold-out performances of “The Sun Also Rises” are at 5:30 p.m. Oct. 9, 2 and 8 p.m. Oct. 10 and 2 p.m. Oct. 11 in the Cook Theatre in the FSU Center for the Performing Arts, 5555 N. Tamiami Trail, Sarasota. For more information, call 360-7399 or check out ringlingartsfestival.org.

View the original article on the Sarasota Herald-Tribune website here.