Summary
One morning in the office of a mysterious small business, an employee finds a copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk. He starts to read it out loud and doesn’t stop. At first his coworkers hardly notice. But after a series of strange coincidences, it’s no longer clear whether he’s reading the book, or the book is transforming him.
Sunday, December 1, 2024 at 2:00 PM Dec 1, 2024, 2:00 PM
Loved this as a companion/contrast to the megamusical and its big-budget sets and costumes and cars and pyrotechnics. “Gatz” eschews these things, abstracting away your sense of time and place, and lays bare the human drama (and the humor!) in the text.
It didn’t alter my brain chemistry or anything like that (although it is pretty crazy when Scott Shepherd closes the book and recites the last ~30 minutes from memory), but I felt like I came away with new appreciation for parts of the story that I hadn’t considered before.
Not everything about it “worked” for me as a “play”—honestly, I don’t know if that’s the right term, or if there is one—but it sort of misses the point to criticize it for dragging a little bit in Acts 1 & 4. It’s not like they’re gonna rewrite the book; you get exactly what you signed up for here.
This is a really interesting bit of performance art and I’m glad I was able to snag a ticket before it closed