A man (Scott Shepherd) enters a nondescript office, drinks coffee from a paper cup, and tries to boot up his computer. He opens a rolling-top desk organizer and out pops The Great Gatsby, the 1995 paperback edition from Scribner that has been a staple of high school classrooms for a generation. He opens the book and reads, “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I’ve been turning over in my mind ever since.” He keeps reading, and eight hours fifteen minutes later, he has finished.

That is, more or less, the extent of Gatz, a marathon adaptation by Elevator Repair Service that tests the limits of theatrical form and audience endurance. There are some concessions to drama. The man’s co-workers slowly take on key roles, speaking their characters’ lines while Shepherd continues to narrate and play the part of Nick Carraway. The office paraphernalia gradually disappears, and by the third act, Jay Gatsby (Jim Fletcher) is wearing a pink suit. Still, Gatz is fundamentally a recitation, with Shepherd taking on the largest burden of the text’s forty-eight thousand words.

This approach has strengths. It highlights some of the humor that may be lost in silent reading, and it allows for soaring moments of lyricism, including, of course, the ending, one of the most beautiful in English literature, perhaps second only to the final paragraph in James Joyce’s “The Dead.”

But the length requires that we remain with these characters for hours and hours, and these characters are depressing. Shallow, aimless, disloyal to their friends. The distance of prose cushions the effect of their personalities, but sitting with them is a grim experience. It’s like watching La Dolce Vita three times in a row. For the most part, Fitzgerald’s liquid prose is not well-served by being spoken aloud.

I admire Gatz and its audacity, and I’m happy to have seen the show—but I’m not sure I liked it.

Gatz ran through December 1st at the Newman Theater.  425 Lafayette Street  New York, NY.  8 hours 15 minutes.  Two intermissions and one 90-minute dinner break. Photograph by Joan Marcus.