To my way of thinking F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1926 novel The Great Gatsby is the only perfect American novel. For a long time I believed neither a word could be added to it nor a word eliminated. I have since changed my mind and think there is a word that could be inserted. Princeton grad Fitzgerald writing about Yale’s campus newspaper, refers to the Yale News. By the 1920s, though, it was the Yale Daily News. Therefore the word “daily” could be slid in.
A minuscule flaw, I quickly concede, in a novel that may also boast the most beautiful final page ever written, at 29, by an American author, a novel I try to reread every couple of years. In addition, I’ve searched out the filmed versions. I’ve survived the 1926 silent adaptation (about which Fitzgerald had harsh words), the weird Alan Ladd 1949 version, the almost-okay Robert Redford-Mia Farrow 1974 take, and Baz Luhrman’s 2013 jaw-dropping assault with Leonardo DiCaprio and Carrie Mulligan. I’ve even watched as much as I could of the sophomoric Nick Carraway Chronicles, that Bryan Stewart-Nirav Patel show on YouTube.
So as someone who’s also read Trimalchio, Fitzgerald’s 1924 first-draft version of his masterwork, I’m declaring myself qualified to insist that the absolute best Great Gatsby stage version is the Elevator Repair Service’s Gatz, now in a short-run revival at NYU Skirball. Perhaps needless to say I hotfooted it there for what has to be either my third or fourth viewing and to which I encourage any Fitzgerald fan to hotfoot it as well. (There is at least one earlier Great Gatsby stage adaptation that isn’t a disgrace but also doesn’t do full justice to the novel.)
The ERS faithfulness to Fitzgerald distinguishes this magnificent offering. How faithful? ERS includes every perfect word of the story narrator Nick Carraway tells about the three ill-fated summer months he spends on Long Island in the company of the elusive but apparently fabulously rich man calling himself Jay Gatsby; the woman Gatsby has loved and meets again, Daisy Buchanan; her philandering husband Tom; and their pal and golf champion, Jordan Baker. Also hovering ominously in the background’s foreground are mechanic George Wilson and wife Myrtle, with whom Tom Buchanan is flagrantly carrying on an affair.
The brilliant conceit within which the ERS and director John Collins set their complete reading is this: Into a well-used, anonymous-looking office (Louisa Thompson is to be congratulated as set designer), a worker (the outstanding Scott Shepherd) arrives one overcast morning to discover that his computer isn’t working. Waiting for it to be repaired (it never is by reading’s end), he opens a book on his desk—Fitzgerald’s Gatsby, of course.
He begins reading aloud to himself and keeps it up as other office workers arrive to go about their business, occasionally showing some interest in the audible prose. Eventually, however, they start to replicate the actions Fitzgerald is describing. Before long the enthralled reader has transformed into Carraway (Shepherd recites the last few pages without book in hand).
Jim Fletcher, who’s been typing at the desk abutting Carraway’s, has now turned into Gatsby (eventually wearing Gatsby’s pink suit), Tory Vasquez has turned into Daisy, Pete Simpson into Tom, Susie Sokol into Jordan (and very much looking the formidable golf pro), Aaron Landsman into George and Laurena Allan into Myrtle. (At some performances Annie McNamara is Daisy and Frank Boyd is George.)
So far, I haven’t mentioned the certainly not surprising fact that Gatz is divided into two parts and covers some eight hours (including two intermissions and a dinner break), which, as Fitzgerald writes it and the ERS players present it, goes by in what seems no more that 10 or 15 minutes, maybe a half hour.
As devoted as I’ve been to the production, I noticed this time what I may have previously overlooked or maybe something that’s developed over the years since the 2004 Gatz bow. It struck me that some of the scenes are acted with mechanical humor. I can’t decide whether I like this or think that the approach can come across as spoofing sequences I understand are deliberately melodramatic. Indeed, Fitzgerald’s final series of scenes—the ones in which these “careless people” tragically involve themselves—are beautifully wrought, are hypnotic, are the author’s excoriation of the decade’s arrogance and blind whimsy.
We all recognize that when rereading a classic, aspects pop up that haven’t been noticed before. Yes, it happened for me during this, uh, reading. It had never before impressed me (perhaps it should have) that these Jazz Age characters share a certain sorry trait. I picked up on this when Nick Carraway, romantically drawn off and on to Jordan, pronounces her “dishonest.” I realized she’s not alone. Aside from the observing Nick, they’re all liars eventually undone by their thoughtless, impulsive behavior. Nick theorizes in the unforgettable final pages that it was the characters’ Midwestern upbringing that leaves them unprepared for Northeastern living. Maybe it’s not just that.
What new will come to me the next time I see Gatz? What might come to you? (Even if you’ve never read the novel or seen the ERS treatment.) So now I can’t wait to get back to it. Hope to see you there.
Gatz opened January 25, 2019, at the NYU Skirball Center and runs through February 3. Tickets and information: elevator.org
