What Audiences are Saying About The Great Gatsby

• "It was wonderful. A must see!"
• "The set and scenery was brilliantly done. The costumes were perfect. it was an entertaining experience."
• "It was fantastic!"
• "The production captured the spirit and message that Fitzgerald was trying to convey. It was very moving."
• I would recommend it - I think it was well adapted, acted, and staged and was enjoyable to watch. And though it may seem superficial, I have also recommended it to female friends purely due to the fact that the actors playing Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are very attractive...great play, hot actors, what more does a girl need?"

Students Watch The Great Gatsby

By Keli Van Holde

VASHON HIGH SCHOOL RIPTIDE

American Studies students travel to Seattle to see The Great Gastby play after they finished reading the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Battling inclement weather and a lethargic ferry system, a group of VHS students made their way to the Seattle Repertory Theatre on Sunday, November 12, to see the play The Great Gatsby. The arrival of the play was timely for those who attended the show, a group of American Studies students who just finished the novel by F. Scott Fitzgerald that weekend for their class.

The play, set in the Roaring '20s, explores the nature of mankind and the differences between eastern and western American culture. It opened with an insightful monologue from the book's narrator, Nick Carraway, and proceeded to tell the story of his involvement with a group of hierarchically different people that find themselves entangled in a bitter web of love, hatred, lust, God, death and money.

The script remained very true to the book, and only detoured by omitting parts, or changing the chronological order of events, as opposed to changing the actual content. This was especially helpful for students who struggled to understand certain aspects of the novel.

The main criticism that playgoers had was that some casting choices were inappropriate. The most common criticism of this was the portrayal of Daisy Buchanan (played by Heidi Armbruster) whose actions on stage seemed contradictory to her original character. This particular issue was one that made the experience less than stellar for Junior Lisa Boehm.

"I was pretty disappointed with some of the casting choices," said Boehm. "I hated how Daisy acted like she was constantly drunk when her character is not supposed to drink."

Meanwhile, other aspects of the play were flawless. The costumes and props were period appropriate while the sets, and even set changes, were second to none. The use of a live, jazz saxophone player on stage during some scenes added to the mood.

All and all, the experience was highly beneficial one to students who wanted a fresh look at what otherwise might be just another high school reading assignment. The Great Gatsby runs through December 10.

Fitzgerald still worth more than all of them: Rep greenlights a new 'GATSBY'

By: STARLA SMITH

QUEEN ANNE NEWS

November 21, 2006

Many artists have tried, unsuccessfully, to capture "The Great Gatsby" on stage or film. But F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic work remains as elusive as Gatsby's dreams of love.

Now a new adaptation written by Simon Levy premières in Seattle. Touted as the first authorized theatrical version of the book since 1926, Seattle Rep's uneven production makes a gallant effort. But if the rumors are true and this show has Broadway aspirations, it needs further development.

Considered an American classic, Fitzgerald's 1925 tome exposed the carefree Jazz Age via the social swells on the Long Island Shore in the summer of 1922. With Prohibition in effect, bootlegging flourished, and extravagant parties were the norm; decadence, opulence and excess abounded.

As the narrator Nick Carraway channels Fitzgerald's voice from the novel, we're introduced to mysterious wannabe tycoon Jay Gatsby and spoiled beauty Daisy Buchanan. Once sweethearts, they meet again five years later when the now fabulously rich Gatsby buys a mansion across the water from where Daisy lives with her wealthy and brutish husband Tom - all part of Gatsby's relentless but ultimately tragic quest to win her back. From his vast garden he can see the green light beaming at the end of Daisy's dock. For Gatsby, that light becomes a beacon of hope.

But "The Great Gatsby" symbolizes much more than lost love. It reflects the disintegration of the American Dream, symbolized by Gatsby's rise to glory and eventual tumble from grace. "Gatsby represented everything I scorned," Nick laments, "...an extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness ... which it is not likely I shall ever find again."

Directed by the Rep's artistic director David Esbjornson, Levy's faithful adaptation borrows heavily from Fitzgerald's lyrical prose. But left to his own devices, Levy's text and the subsequent stage action seem stilted and ponderous, particularly during the first act. The dramatic second act fares better, but the play still fails to reproduce the magnificence of Fitzgerald's novel.

One of the best things about the production is David J. Wright III's wailing saxophone. As he roams the stage, his incredible talent heralds the action, endows ambience and pays homage to the period setting.

The main players in Fitzgerald's mythical game of life are flawed but fascinating. A mysterious loner, Gatsby throws lavish weekend soirees at his mansion, but his background, source of wealth and unsavory connections provide continual fodder for his greedy, gossiping guests. Daisy, a self-indulgent neurotic, adores anyone who lavishes attention on her, always seeking some new diversion to avoid the loneliness and buried guilt lurking within her own soul.

Her husband Tom, a snobbish racist, views his beautiful wife as an ornamental possession - a symbol of his wealth, like the stable full of horses he boasts of. Contemptuous of the lower classes, he still seeks his passion from earthy but rather crass Myrtle, married to George, Tom's garage mechanic. And Jordan, Daisy's unflappable best friend, reputedly won her golf pro status by cheating during a match.

Although each of the leading actors has a moment or two onstage, the overall result leaves us wanting. None of them fully develop or sustain their characterizations. As Gatsby, Lorenzo Pisoni seems to be channeling Ben Affleck, but without the mysterious demeanor needed for Gatsby, and with an English accent too fake to be believable. And as the emotionally unstable Daisy, Heidi Armbruster borrows from what seems like a dab of Jessica Lange in the film "Blue Sky," but suffers from a lack of depth. Cheyenne Casebier endows her Jordan with a bland interpretation, excluding the suggestive kiss she tenderly plants on Daisy's lips.

Matthew Amendt has a dual responsibility in the role of Nick Carraway - the decent, young Midwestern man who comes East for social polishing, and Nick the narrator who sets the mood and guides us through Fitzgerald's story. Amendt may be quite likable, but falls short as the philosophical raconteur so fascinated by Gatsby's character.

Visually, the show often achieves what the script and actors do not with color combinations that dazzle the eye. Designer Scott Zielinski conjures stunning vistas with his lighting effects as he shifts the backdrop from impressionistic sunsets to midnight skies of crisp blue to the blood red of tragedy when Gatsby is murdered. And costumer Jane Greenwood's marvelous flapper couture flutters with authenticity, especially Daisy's frothy cream and white ensembles.

Set designer Tom Lynch creates an illusion of wealth. Floating French windows are suspended in the air. A creamy white art deco divan sumptuous enough to devour a gaggle of socialites dominates Daisy and Tom's living room. Gatsby's palatial digs showcase an ornate French armoire and sparkling crystal chandeliers, while a vintage replica of Gatsby's lemon-yellow Rolls-Royce convertible wheels across the stage, and a sunken pool of clear blue water awaits his demise. To separate high society from the hoi polloi, a moveable two-story metal frame denotes George and Myrtle's gas-station home.

Lynch has also given life to the billboard from the novel, as it looms over "the valley of ashes," Fitzgerald's label for the gray strip of industrialization between Long Island and Manhattan. From that forlorn, weather-worn billboard, Dr. T.J. Eckleburg's bespectacled eyes - they really open and close - keep their vigil, perhaps a symbol of a higher being, maybe even Fitzgerald, watching over the travesties of the flawed humans he has created. There have been three film versions of "The Great Gatsby," a made-for-TV movie, an opera, dance tributes and an earlier stage version in 1926. All failed to capture the book's elusive brilliance - even Francis Ford Coppola's script for the 1974 film starring Robert Redford and Mia Farrow.

So perhaps it is too much to expect that someone might successfully transfer the breathtaking complexities of Fitzgerald's fable to stage or screen. We will simply have to reread the novel to savor its sublime metaphors, whispering hope and tragic perfection.

More than great: Seattle Repertory play sparkles

By Sara Lee , Features Writer

November 15, 2006

THE FALCON ONLINE

Women in colorful dresses with swaying tassels and glinting sequins flit across the stage's smooth surface. Peppy jazz music, drunken laughter and a whiff of expensive perfume mingle with cigarette smoke.

Welcome to Jay Gatsby's famous (and anything but) "small party."

Here, the mysterious host vanishes. He is more preoccupied with the green light across the water, and the guests prattle vainly, attempting to guess his past life. Who is Jay Gatsby? "A murderer," perhaps, or "a spy," or no, "a swindler," they all claim.

If you've read F. Scott Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," you should already know the greatness that is Gatsby, but whether you have read the book or not, watching the play will deliver much delight.

The Seattle Repertory Theatre, under David Esbjornson's direction, gives a stunning performance and represents Fitzgerald's classic novel well, artfully synthesizing the writer's renowned work onto the stage with Simon Levy's adapted script.

The curtain slides open to a hazy scene where the bespectacled narrator Nick Carraway, played by Matthew Amendt, approaches the audience. In the background, behind a veiling screen, stands the elevated silhouette of Gatsby, played by Lorenzo Pisoni, gazing into the distance. And The Saxman, played by David J. Wright III, lingers on stage, soulfully shaping the depth of mood. Only five minutes into the performance and already this show proves itself to be worthwhile.

Adding more comedy than the book might advertise, Carraway's nervous and awkward behavior creates a vivid foil to the cool and haughty qualities of Nick's second cousin Daisy, played by Heidi Armbruster, and her adulterous husband Tom Buchanan, played by Erik Heger.

Daisy, with her yellow gowns and energetic movements, dramatically lures attention and arouses self-pity. She affectionately pushes Nick toward her friend, female golfer Jordan Baker, played by Cheyenne Casebier.

But it is Gatsby, bold with a strawberry-colored suit, who alone deserves the title "great." The patient and clever Gatsby has lost himself in the obsession of a woman who no longer exists. The fantasy of Daisy haunts him. He cries incredulously to his neighbor Nick, "Can't repeat the past? Why of course you can!" Within Gatsby is the ultimate illusion for the "American dream," even including power over time.

However, as the sign of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg's ceaseless eyes never falter, so "God sees everything," according to George Wilson, the husband of Tom's mistress.

This play deals with conflicts between morals, between old and new money and between selfless love and self-centeredness.

With these colorful and profound characters, the dramatic performance engages the audience both in laughter and in genuine sympathy. Bold and enticing, the intense and convincing acting, the simple yet fitting sets, and the elaborate costumes all add to the excellence of this production. This play gives life to Fitzgerald's timeless story.

The Great Gatsby at Seattle Repertory Theatre

Talking Broadway

David Edward-Hughes

The 1974 film version of F. Scott Fitzgerald's seminal Twenties novel, The Great Gatsby, was a sumptuous and starry bore, a case of all dressed up with nowhere to go. Despite some really fine acting, fluid and nearly cinematic direction by David Esbjornson,  a sleek and versatile scenic design by Tom Lynch, and rather ravishing period costumes by Jane Greenwood, Simon Levy's stage adaptation is further evidence that some books are best read, and not transferred to the stage or the screen.

The tale of Jay Gatsby, a mysterious, wealthy man with a shady reputation trying to recapture a lost and ultimately doomed romance with his World War I era southern belle sweetheart (the now unhappily married Daisy Buchanan), is narrated by Gatsby's friend Nick Carraway, who is truly the only sympathetic figure in the story. Daisy's husband Tom is a rather loutish fellow carrying on a back street affair with the blowzily pathetic Myrtle Wilson, who is also cheating on her working class husband George. Nick is smitten by the charismatic but ultimately chilly Jordan Baker. Tragedies (which are telegraphed from a mile away) strike, romances are shattered, but ultimately it is hard to care about these people, despite strong, focused work from most of the principals, just as was the case with the '74 film. Director Esbjornson creates numerous haunting images, and an act two section with scenes taking place in several distinct locales simultaneously is indeed expert work. But the show starts slowly, then comes to life only in fits and starts.

Lorenzo Pison is a dashing, charismatic Gatsby, and does elicit some small amount of sympathy as he embodies the character's futile quest for his lost love Daisy. Heidi Armbruster's Daisy is a fascinating, high octane Southern belle, though the performance seems more appropriate for one of Tennessee Williams' ladies than one of Fitzgerald's. Matthew Amendt is all you could ask for as narrator Nick Carraway, finding all the facets of the character with meticulous ease, wonderfully conveying his hero worship of Gatsby and ultimate distaste for the likes of Daisy and Tom. Amendt's closing monologue is a quietly and painfully moving coda, most impressively handled. Erik Heger is strong as the brusque Tom Buchanan, and Kathryn Van Meter as the doomed Myrtle makes much of relatively sparse dialogue, capturing a woman wanting to escape her own social status yet unable to fit into the more elevated one she yearns for. Bradford Farwell is impressive as Myrtle's bereft spouse George, and Cheyenne Casebier mines some brittle humor out of the odd character of Jordan. In one of several meaty bit roles, Sean G. Griffin is rather touching as Gatsby's somewhat estranged yet loving father. The small ensemble does what it can to suggest various partygoers and socialites, but their scenes seem rather noticeably underpopulated. David J. Wright is a welcome addition to the mood of the play as the omnipresent Saxman.

Wayne Barker has composed some excellent original music for the production, especially a haunting and ghostly main theme, while choreographer Sean Curran seamlessly weaves in the dance elements needed.  A great deal of care and effort was obviously employed in bringing this new adaptation (first seen at the Guthrie in Minneapolis) to the stage. But it is best classified as a noble effort which yields only modest rewards.

On Stage: Seattle Rep superbly mines the essence of Fitzgerald's 'Great Gatsby'

Tuesday, November 14, 2006

By JOE ADCOCK

SEATTLE P-I THEATER CRITIC

Stories that were once excitingly contemporary become intriguingly mythic as presented in two shows that opened during the past week. One production, "The Great Gatsby," is exceedingly serious. The other, "Bye Bye Birdie," is exceedingly not serious.

In very different ways, both shows deal with the fraught disruption created by young, supervital proletarian men who are deplorably attractive to nice, respectable young women from good families.

"The Great Gatsby," F. Scott Fitzgerald's celebrated 1925 novel, has served as an X-ray diagnosis of the social fracturing that followed U.S. participation in World War I. Daisy and Tom Buchanan are American aristocrats -- rich, idle, irresponsible and supposedly insulated from riff-raff.

But Tom lusts after trashy sluts. And Daisy, before she was married, met the love of her life at one of those socials at which nice girls cheered up soldiers who were due to be shipped overseas to fight in France. Jay Gatsby, a poor farm boy from North Dakota, was one of those soldiers. He and Daisy made rash promises to one another.

Five years later, Gatsby is fabulously wealthy and amazingly polished. Bootlegging in the '20s opened unique opportunities for supervital proletarian young men like Gatsby. He buys a Long Island mansion near the Buchanans' estate. He lays siege to Daisy. At first, events are romantic. Then they are messy. Then they are tragic.

Playwright Simon Levy does a beautiful job of distilling Fitzgerald's sometimes fussy prose. Levy's combination of narration, dialogue and action delivers most of what is best in the novel and leaves out nearly all the contrived straining for effect.

Seattle Repertory Theatre artistic director David Esbjornson's staging of Levy's play is beautiful. Scenery by Tom Lynch evokes both limitless luxury and cramped squalor by means of significant pieces of furniture, a few walls and a gorgeous backdrop of Long Island Sound summer clouds right out of a painting by Maxfield Parrish.

Similarly effective are costumes by Jane Greenwood.

As Gatsby, Lorenzo Pisoni is stunning. The supervital proletarian male energy he projects is refined and focused. When Pisoni gazes at Heidi Armbruster, who plays Daisy, the yearning is overpowering. Armbruster overdoes the Tennessee Williams Southern lady gush and flutter, but she still manages to give Pisoni a plausible target for the Gatsby passion.

Erik Heger as Tom is amazing. He portrays a white supremacist proto-fascist, a Nazi sympathizer in the making -- one of those nice, respectable guys from good families who will be seduced by the super vitality of such proletarian upstarts as Hitler, Mussolini and Franco. Heger doesn't hold back. He fills in the details of a temperamental polo-playing plutocrat who is self-absorbed without having much of a self to be absorbed in. The admirable thing about Heger's work is the professional detail and artistic intensity that he brings to bear.

As narrator Nick Carraway, Matthew Amendt gives voice to Fitzgerald's sometime vaporous effusions. Nick is Daisy's cousin. Effusions aside, he imparts a certain depth to what could be a frivolous romance/melodrama/crime story. Hit-and-run heedlessness and obsessive delusions are not for him. Amendt shows how Nick is changed by what he lives through.

'Gatsby' leaps from the page to Rep stage

Friday, November 3, 2006

By JOE ADCOCK

P-I THEATER CRITIC

"Art for art's sake" is a concept with multiple meanings. In Seattle just now, one of those meanings stands out. The art of theater can be of service to the art of narrative fiction -- and vice versa.

Last week, Intiman Theatre premiered an adaptation of Richard Wright's 1940 novel "Native Son," a frightening story that raises crisscrossing questions about race, poverty and misogyny. According to Intiman's adaptor/director Kent Gash, "The point is to get Richard Wright's work out in front of the public again."

And then there's Book-It Repertory Theatre, a Seattle institution of 16 years standing. Book-It's stock in trade is stage adaptations of superior fiction. The company, according to co-artistic director Myra Platt, was "founded on the belief that literature as theater could directly affect the literacy rate in King County as well as create new plays for the American theater. Our audiences continue to grow, and each year we do better than the previous year."

And now another theater company, Seattle Repertory Theatre, enters the page-to-stage picture. "The Great Gatsby" opens at the Rep on Wednesday. Artistic director David Esbjornson staged this adaptation's premiere at the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis last summer. Esbjornson's views on turning novels into play scripts are similar to those of Platt and Gash.

"I would like audiences to have an experience that may allow them to fall in love with the genius of F. Scott Fitzgerald's prose," Esbjornson said in a recent interview. "And it's important for us to know about Fitzgerald's analysis of the American Dream."

As portrayed and analyzed in "The Great Gatsby," that dream is mostly a nightmare. Though the milieu is genteel, the takes on class and race are similar to those in "Native Son."

Fitzgerald's narrator, Nick Carraway, 30, is beguiled and repelled by wealth, glamour and status as manifested in the early 1920s on the gilded north shore of Long Island.

Among the beachfront mansions there is one belonging to Jay Gatsby, a fabulously rich and mysterious bachelor. Gatsby is as beguiled as Carraway by the mystique of materialism, but he is not one bit repelled.

Across a bay from the Gatsby estate is a mansion belonging to Tom and Daisy Buchanan. Gatsby idolizes Daisy, a young society goddess. Tom expresses, and maybe even feels, contempt for Gatsby. The triangle is a quadrangle if you count Tom's slutty mistress.

What at first seems like an Edith Wharton or Henry James report on upper-crust life becomes a tragedy, related by the morbidly fascinated Carraway.

Fitzgerald was born in St. Paul in 1896. The Guthrie Theatre premiered Los Angeles playwright Simon Levy's adaptation of "Gatsby" to celebrate the centennial of Fitzgerald's birth and to inaugurate the company's new $125 million home beside the Mississippi River.

"I had to read 'The Great Gatsby' when I was in the 10th grade," says Esbjornson. "I couldn't get into it. I complained to my teacher and he said, 'Do me a favor. Just read another 20 pages. If you still can't get interested, I'll assign you something else.' So I went back to 'The Great Gatsby.' And, really, 10 pages later I became enthralled and ended up loving the book."

Like Esbjornson in the 10th grade, many people have to persevere to get into "The Great Gatsby." There's a lot of genealogy and geography to slog through at the beginning -- who is related to whom, what they all look like, where they live, and what their houses look like. That business is particularly reminiscent of Wharton and James. Then the action starts.

"Fitzgerald takes no prisoners," Esbjornson says. "No one comes off well. And it's not just the rich are bad, the poor are good. By the end, you may not like all the characters but you feel for them, you understand their pain and disillusionment."

"For the stage, you distill, you get to the essence," Esbjornson reassures. "Our show is only about two hours long with intermission."

The Rep and Intiman, both of which have won Excellence in Regional Theatre Tony Awards, are the major big deals in the Seattle stage ecology. Book-It is more what you'd call a "midsize" enterprise. Book-It's Platt does not resent, however, big deals poaching on her little territory. She expresses the hope that audiences will "find their way from 'Native Son' and 'The Great Gatsby' to our productions of Dickens' 'A Tale of Two Cities' and Isabel Allende's 'The House of the Spirits.' "

West Egg, Overcooked: Literalism mutes an American classic's mythic resonance.

By Richard Morin

SEATTLE WEEKLY

The Great Gatsby opens with a scene of surprising power. Onto a stage flooded with thick mist and suffused with hazy light strolls the Saxman (David J. Wright III); bending slowly to his instrument, he blows long and airy notes, a jazzy foghorn sounding into the twilight. After a moment, a clearer light shines into this white cloud, silhouetting a man in a trench coat, a shadowy figure straight out of a Fritz Lang film. He appears to be levitating in the ether, suspended in a dream of self. The man strikes a match, lights the cigarette in his mouth.

There's no mistaking: This is Jay Gatsby, his far-off gaze maybe seeking the promise of Daisy Buchanan's distant green light. Another man, very much a creature of this earth, walks into the foreground and begins: "If personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures, then there was something gorgeous about him..." It's a kind of still life that captures what is momentous and elemental and fleeting in Gatsby's character. Ironically, the rest of the play, adapted by Simon Levy and directed by David Esbjornson, doesn't live up to the excitement and promise of this opening; it can't. The production, lacking the imaginative force of its prologue, is borne back ceaselessly into the mundane.

It's F. Scott Fitzgerald's crackerjack prose—economical and unsentimental, seamlessly woven, always just right—that makes The Great Gatsby the nearest we've got to a great American novel. The story of millionaire Jay Gatsby's romantic rise and tragic fall, conceived in the clickety-clack cauldron of the Jazz Age, remains not only a perfect autopsy of the American dream but a timelessly epic meditation on the vagaries of love and fate. Any adaptation of Fitzgerald's classic is, simply, up against a masterpiece; any thought of improvement is folly. To capture on stage or screen even a glint of Gatsby's mystique, one must move beyond the straight architecture of the narrative and instead traffic in essential moments that delve into the novel's mythic quality. Seattle Rep's production fails by relying too heavily on a linear recounting, telling us nothing new about a book that, it's safe to assume, everyone is familiar with. There is, to be sure, a certain satisfaction in beholding, once again, the story of Gatsby's downfall, but satisfaction is not revelation, and such faithful reproductions lack magic.

Esbjornson does the best he can with the script, keeping the pacing and rhythm swift and sure. Some of the casting is inspired. Lorenzo Pisoni is not at first an obvious fit for Gatsby, but as things progress, his chiseled good looks and broadly phatic demeanor begin to reveal the character's cipherlike qualities. Also good is Matthew Amendt as Nick Carraway, despite moments when his reserve gives way and his narration, lifted from the book, verges on the hysterical. Cheyenne Casebier is perfect as Jordan Baker, compromised tennis pro and Nick's love interest. Erik Heger doesn't quite capture Tom Buchanan's jocklike loutishness; as his wife, Daisy, Heidi Armbruster comes on a little too loud and eager, though her frantic behavior does get at the sadness and romantic anxiety that seems to drive Gatsby's love object. Sean G. Griffin is good as Gatsby's associate Meyer Wolfsheim, and Kathryn Van Meter is appropriately campy and trashy (sometimes a bit too) as Tom's mistress, Myrtle Wilson.

As promising as is the misty opening, Gatsby's penultimate scene, conversely, sums up what's wrong with this adaptation. As Gatsby floats lazily in his pool, into full view sneaks Myrtle's husband, George Wilson (Bradford Farwell), pistol in hand. He fires several shots into Gatsby, who flinches and spasms with each hit. It's altogether too much information, a literal reading obscuring the larger tragedy: Gatsby's death becomes a coarse matter of criminal intent rather than the fateful death of an impossible dream.

From pages to stage: Seattle Rep hopes to succeed where others have failed with 'Great Gatsby'

KING COUNTY JOURNAL

By Doug Margeson

Journal Reporter

"The Great Gatsby" is a great risk. Ever since F. Scott Fitzgerald's masterpiece hit bookstore shelves in 1925, people have been trying to adapt it to the screen and stage. The efforts have met mostly with failure. It's a great book, but maybe it just isn't right for the stage.

Playwright Simon Levy and the folks at the Seattle Rep think otherwise. They will back up their opinion by plunging into some of the most treacherous theatrical waters around when they present "The Great Gatsby" Thursday through Dec. 10.

"'The Great' covers a lot of territory and has multiple story lines, so this version shows us a lot of fluidity," said Abraham Braden, literary manager for the Rep and assistant director of the premier of Levy's adaptation at the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis earlier this year.

"We try to take the American lyricism of the novel and make it visual," Braden said.

"Gatsby" is, among many things, a story of great contrasts, particularly the contrasts between the old-money rich of East Egg, Long Island, the nouveau riche on the other side of the bay at West Egg and the poor who live in the Valley of Ashes, a especially stygian stretch of urban blight on the road to Manhattan.

The weak and the ruined live there. The rich exploit them for the services they can provide, including sex, ignore them the rest of the time and, in general, don't consider them fully human. The road through the valley is dominated by the eerie, ever-watching eyes of a big billboard advertising Dr. T. J. Eckleburg, an optometrist.

Nick Carraway lives in a small house in West Egg. Just back from the First World War, he is seeking his fortune in the bond business. He is crushingly bored. The house next door is a huge mansion and the site of loud, lavish parties every weekend. It is owned by a mysterious man named Gatsby. Nick meets Gatsby one day and they become friends, although at a distance. Gatsby is close to no one. Sometimes, Nick sees him staring across the bay at a green light on a dock in East Egg. That dock is owned by Tom Buchanan, heir to a fortune and husband to Nick's cousin Daisy.

To ease his boredom, Nick attends Gatsby's parties, where he appreciates the free liquor but detests the appalling vulgarity of the other guests. Or, he goes to visit Daisy and Tom, who are more genteel — on the surface, at least. Tom supplies Nick with free drinks too, particularly when he visits his mistress, Myrtle Wilson, the wife of a downtrodden mechanic in The Valley of Ashes.

Still with us? And that's just a thumbnail outline of the first part of the book. "The Great Gatsby" is an intricate story, weaving together a lot of themes, both obvious and subtle. Things happen, to be sure, building upon one another to create a powerful conclusion. But they rarely involve the clear-cut action you need to move a play along at a pace that keeps the audience engaged.

And, in the book, they all are seen through the eyes of Nick Carraway. We don't know what's going on the minds of the other characters beyond what Nick observes.

"He's not an active character, which is one reason the dramatic treatments of the book often don't quite work," Braden said. "So, you have to create action around Nick."

In Levy's adaptation, that is done through the transposition and blending of places: East Egg, West Egg and the Valley. As the story continues, they start to visually merge, Braden said. That's important because, like Nick, Fitzgerald was more an observer than a participant in the affluent world about which he wrote. He liked its elegant trappings, but he wasn't fooled by them. In his stories, the outwardly gay and carefree people of the jazz age usually were revealed as having darker, more tawdry traits.

"Fitzgerald seduces you with the money and beauty of it all, but nobody escapes his critical eye. He cuts through facades with deadly accuracy," Braden said.

But he was humane, too. Gatsby, particularly, emerges as a sympathetic character; a man who fervently believes money and success will elevate him above human nature's baser expressions. He epitomizes hope, although ultimately, it is false hope, Braden said.

Levy's adaptation opened to mixed reviews in Minneapolis. Dominic Papatola of  The St. Paul Pioneer Press respected its faithfulness to the novel, but found its portrayal of the main characters all wrong and its milieu more reminiscent of Tennessee William's than Fitzgerald. The Capitol Time's Kevin Lynch liked it, particularly in its use of Fitzgerald's sophisticated dialogue.

Most vivid Jay Gatsby still dwells in reader's imagination

By Misha Berson

Seattle Times theater critic

"Who knows, my dear sir, but for a time you may have taken yourself for somebody else? Stranger things have happened."

Those lines from Herman Melville's "The Confidence Man" apply equally to "The Great Gatsby," another archetypal tale about the flimflam fluidity of American identity.

F. Scott Fitzgerald's hallmark novel introduced Jay Gatsby, the quintessential self-made American with no fixed self.

Though potent on the page, "Gatsby" has stubbornly resisted successful dramatization. And that record is unbroken by the handsome but stiff new stage adaptation at Seattle Repertory Theatre.

Directed by David Esbjornson, from a script by Simon Levy, the Rep's "Great Gatsby" is stocked with by-the-book emblems of the 1920s high life.

Tom Lynch's scenic design boasts a real swimming pool and a vintage, canary-yellow luxury car. A roving sax player (David J. Wright III) and period-perfect flapper attire by Jane Greenwood also place us in the Jazz Age.

Yet realizing Fitzgerald's misty saga is not just a matter of historical accuracy. This is a timeless, gauzy pipe dream gone awry, with a strange tragic hero – rich, gallant, impenetrable, ruthless, and finally a victim of his own romantic delusions.

Fitzgerald wrote the novel in brush strokes so delicate, early critics mistook it for "light fiction." Levy and Esbjornson certainly disagree. But their approach to "Gatsby" is too emphatically literal to tap the story's elusive power.

Narrated, like the book, by Fitzgerald surrogate Nick Carraway (portrayed by Matthew Amendt), this "Gatsby" vigorously depicts the follies of the posh, fast Long Island set, lost in a post-World War I malaise of bootlegged booze and "careless" amorality.

A middle-class voyeur to the scene, Nick hangs with his lovely cousin Daisy (Heidi Armbruster), her racist, faithless husband Tom (Erik Heger) and their flippant guest Jordan (Cheyenne Casebier).

Most intriguing, though, is Nick's enigmatic neighbor Gatsby (Lorenzo Pisoni). Though he hosts lavish parties, Gatsby is a lonely figure, evasive about his origins and wealth. But his ardent pursuit of Daisy leads to his demise.

The peons who mingle with the fast crowd, Tom's mistress Myrtle (Kathryn Van Meter) and her dour husband George (Bradford Farwell), also get burned by it.

Levy's play debuted in Minneapolis last July under Esbjornson's direction, with the same main actors. And the sincere effort and polish bestowed on this second production are evident.

But what is subtle and poignant in Fitzgerald's prose is too often blunt or absent here. Armbruster's Daisy is more strident than dazzling; Casebier's Jordan is a wry blank. The coarseness of Van Meter's Myrtle eclipses her sexiness, while Farwell's jealous, violent George gets unneeded elaboration.

More affecting are Heger's vigorous Tom, and Amendt's ambivalent, clear-eyed Nick.

But if Pisoni is a restrained, at times sweetly naive Gatsby, it's hard to care much about him — as man or metaphor.

That's true, though, of other dramatic manifestations of this near-mythic character.

So far, only one Gatsby has really come alive: the one who dwells in the reader's imagination.

GREAT GATSBY CONTINES TO PACK IN CROWDS AT SEATTLE REP PREMIERE

SEATTLE GAY NEWS

The Seattle Repertory Theatre has one of its strongest audience hits in recent years with its solid production of a new stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The new stage script's world premiere was this summer at the new Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis where David Esbjornson, the Rep's new artistic director, helmed the premiere.

For the Emerald City, Esbjornson basically replicates the staging and uses most of the cast from the Guthrie production. While there have been minor changes in staging and casting, the production is a win-win event for both theaters. Technically, it is not a co-production-it is "in association with The Great Gatsby Green Light LLC" group.

The Great Gatsby has had multiple film and stage adaptations-all failing, to some degree, to capture the essence of Fitzgerald's classic literary work. While this latest version by Simon Levy comes closer than most, it is still a plot driven adaptation of a book that is memorable for its style. The melodramatic events that propel the story have to remain, but these very plot complications often land with a soft thud in the sparkling production.

One of the most effective moments-an illustration of what great wealth can do-has one character unwrapping new shirts and throwing them in the air. Suddenly, dozens of other shirts spiral down from the overhead fly space of the theater. The stylized, symbolic moment is true to the moment, true to the book, true to the spirit of the play.

The hardworking cast gives solid performances. Daisy Buchanan is the illusive, hard-to-play center of the story. Here, Heidi Armbruster does solid work but never really captures the essence of Fitzgerald's Daisy. Erik Heger is a fine Tom Buchanan and Lorenzo Pisoni is a memorable Gatsby. The ensemble cast is effective.

(Because of much of Gatsby, like most of Fitzgerald's work, is autobiographical, fans of the book and the adaptations enjoy making comparisons to the real life Scott and Zelda-the inspirations for Jay and Daisy.)

To no one's surprise, the combination of the literary classic, the world famous author, the new adaptation and the solid, respectful reviews from the Guthrie-and nostalgia for the Roaring '20s--have made the Rep's Great Gatsby an out-and-out audience pleaser and a hot ticket.

Several groups have hosted Great Gatsby theater parties at the Rep-when Bits&Bytes caught in its first full week, U.S. Bank had 80 employees in flapper dresses and straw hats gather for a private, costumed cocktail party at one end of the Rep's spacious lobby. Charleston music filled the lobby, wine and nibbles got the group ready for the play. At a local restaurant later in the play's run, a costumed group of four had simply dressed up in flapper style to celebrate the evening.'