Most theatrical adaptations of famous books take artistic license to boil the story down to a manageable length, a couple of hours at most.
This week in Ann Arbor, a stage version of the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel “The Great Gatsby” takes a different approach.
For Inside the Arts, WKAR’s Scott Pohl talks with the founder and artistic director of the New York-based Elevator Repair Service theatre ensemble, John Collins, as well as the star of the play called “Gatz."
Seeing the play “Gatz” takes commitment. With intermissions and time for a meal, the production has a running time of about eight hours. It’s been staged all over the world.
Director John Collins says the play takes place in a run-down office, where a worker with a bit of time on his hands finds a copy of “The Great Gatsby” and begins reading it out loud. “It starts out as something, as more the story of someone reading the book than the story of the book itself,” Collins stated, “and then it becomes the story of the book. The other thing I think is different is that ‘Gatz’ uses every single word of the novel’s text. It doesn’t change anything or add anything.”
Actor Scott Shepherd won an Obie Award, off-Broadway’s highest honor, for playing the lead role in 2011. He explained his character’s motivation for picking up “The Great Gatsby”: “He’s apparently never heard of it before, and he gets so involved, he can’t stop reading until he’s done.”
The man’s co-workers gradually become involved in the story as characters in the book.
Collins says he was hyper aware of the challenge of such a long show for the audience, especially when they initially produced “Gatz” in New York. The first act is about two hours long. "After that,” he continued, “I think it’s very forgiving. And, you know, there’s an hour and a half dinner break in the middle, so it isn’t meant to test the audience physically so much as just to test their ability to tune out the rest of the world for eight hours.”
Shepherd isn’t required to memorize the entire script. After all, he’s holding the book. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s easy to do. “You’re constantly looking away from the book and back at it,” Shepherd continued, “and the opportunities to get lost are legion.”
Eight hours is a very long time to be onstage, and there’s the drain of reading aloud the entire time. Shepherd has found a way to think about “Gatz” that helps him: realizing that going to work for eight hours is what “regular people” do.
As for those attending the show, one way to think about seeing such a long play is to compare the effort to binge watching a TV series in a day. You’re just bingeing a theatrical experience instead.
The University Musical Society brings “Gatz” to the Power Center in Ann Arbor Friday and Saturday March 27 and 28 at 2 p.m., and at 1 p.m. on Sunday March 29.
UMS is a financial supporter of WKAR.
