Mark Twain famously defined a classic as a book that people praise and don’t read. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Gatsby’’ is that rare classic that many people have actually read, often in high school English class. They may have a vague memory of flappers, and something about the American Dream and a green light at the end of Daisy Buchanan’s dock.
The achievement of “Gatz’’ is to reimagine and reanimate “Gatsby,’’ forcing us to consider it afresh by thrusting it into a world that could not be more different from Fitzgerald’s glittering galaxy, all while remaining faithful to the text.
Actually, “faithful’’ massively understates the case. Every single word of “Gatsby’’ is either read or performed onstage. We get to luxuriate in Fitzgerald’s jeweled prose while seeing his characters and ideas brought to life. It is an idea both radical and simple. And it works.
Most of the time. There are draggy periods in the first half of “Gatz’’ that amount to not much more than a live-action audiobook. (There is an intermission during each half of the show, plus a one-hour dinner break between the two parts). During these first-half longueurs, you may wonder why there has been such a fuss over “Gatz,’’ which has been celebrated in the other US cities and the eight foreign countries where it has toured since its premiere in Brussels in 2006.
My advice is to stick with it. The second half of “Gatz’’ is really something special. That is when the fateful trajectory of “Gatz’’ leads to its inevitable denouement; that is when it coheres into a shattering portrait of loss that both rejects and reaffirms the mystique of the romantic quest.
