Gatz is an 8 hour “play” in which the main character reads the entirety of The Great Gatsby to the audience. Our “reader” starts out as an office worker who’s computer won’t turn on, but during the show, proceeds to morph into Nick Carroway, the narrator (or purported “author”) of the book.

I had expected Gatz to show the audience howThe Great Gatsby plays out in the office of the character reading it, with two co-workers being Daisy and Tom, and the secretary being Jordan Baker, etc. Meaning, the conceit of being in an office would be maintained as the drama ran it’s course. This production started out in a manner such that I thought this might be the case, but instead, it became clear that the office was simply the backdrop for this story to be staged with characters wearing business casual attire. Meaning that, instead of the story playing out “in the office”, it was playing out in the mind of the reader, but because the setting in which he was reading it was an office, that’s where we saw the events transpire.

While the show may not have met my expectations in the above regard, it exceeded them in other regards. During Gatz, I am surprised to say, it did not seem like I was sitting in the theater for eight hours. Even with the three intermissions (one being a dinner break), time really flew by. I was reminded that the story of The Great Gatsby is an engaging one, and was also reminded of the value of great prose. Not a word is wasted.

The actors should be applauded for such an undertaking, and they were. I found it fascinating that because the story was being read to us – and was not a first person account – the acting was less naturalistic and more akin to doing voices when reading a bedtime story to a child. This is not to say that I thought the performances were sub-par; on the contrary, I thought they were great. But it was interesting to note that for this different type of theatrical story-telling, they chose to use a different type of acting. The company also made a concerted effort to inject humor into the performance, finding opportunities to layer it in physically without changing the narrative of the story. I appreciated this effort, a wise one in a show so long, though I found some of these injections more to my taste than others. In speaking with friends who’ve seen the show, it seems that audience reactions run the gamut. I was amused in one of the drinking scenes by Nick pouring a drink from a thermos with googly eyes, only to then offer the drink to the anthropomorphized thermos, which accepts, and then pour the beverage back into it, quenching the thermos’s thirst. In a way, this bit stuck out with it’s “puppetry,” but if categorized as “stand-alone goofiness,” then some other bits would keep it in good company. As the thermos was in the “actual office” and the drinking party was not, the instance seemed to be a slight acknowledgement of the 4th wall. But a greater one comes at the end of the first and third acts, when Scott, who plays Nick, announces that we will take an intermission. While it got the point across, I wondered if those announcements were really necessary. After the second act, we figured out it was intermission when the lights came up, and it’s so wonderful to be able to lose oneself in the story being told, that it’s a bit of a shame to be shaken out of it so abruptly.

While I may have these few critiques, I’ve often had many more after sitting through a two hour play, and I’ve often sat through a two hour play during which I was less engaged. Gatz is an amazing experience, and one well worth having.