Last year, audiences sat for nearly six hours—some brought pillows and snacks—to watch the critically acclaimed "Gatz," a dramatic reading of the entire text of "The Great Gatsby" by the theater group Elevator Repair Service. They won't have to be seated quite as long for the company's new rendition of Ernest Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises": This time, the company decided to do some editing.
The roughly three-hour play, which starts performances at New York Theatre Workshop next Friday, is guided by the book's narrator, a journalist made impotent by a war injury, played by actor Mike Iveson. "The more we do it, the less Hemingway persona I'm putting on it and I'm letting the words do most of the work," says Mr. Iveson, who performs without a book, unlike the narrator in "Gatz."
The production, which premiered in Edinburgh last year, dramatizes the text with sound effects (popping Champagne corks), choreography (a 1960s French dance routine) and figurative props (a table with horns portrays a snorting bull) to move the action from the bars of Paris to the bullfights of Pamplona.
Director John Collins says it was liberating to chip away at a work instead of performing it word-for-word. "It really felt like it's time to let go of this religion we've started to cultivate about not letting go of any part of these novels," he says. "It saves me from thinking, 'Is this going to be as good as 'Gatz'?"
—Ellen Gamerman
Mark Barton
Kate Scelsa performs in 'The Select (The Sun Also Rises).' Mr. Hemingway's famously spare prose and clipped dialogue remain in this telling, titled "The Select (The Sun Also Rises)," but some passages have been cut, including a chapter describing a bus ride to a fishing trip in northern Spain. The company took some artistic license, too, such as casting an actress as a male bullfighter.
The production, which premiered in Edinburgh last year, dramatizes the text with sound effects (popping Champagne corks), choreography (a 1960s French dance routine) and figurative props (a table with horns portrays a snorting bull) to move the action from the bars of Paris to the bullfights of Pamplona.
Director John Collins says it was liberating to chip away at a work instead of performing it word-for-word. "It really felt like it's time to let go of this religion we've started to cultivate about not letting go of any part of these novels," he says. "It saves me from thinking, 'Is this going to be as good as 'Gatz'?"
—Ellen Gamerman
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