“The Great Gatsby is for all its self-evident, effervescent beauties, a very strange book”
As for the nuts and bolts, the premise of the production is that in the course of a working day, the man who will become Nick Carraway, played by Shepherd, discovers a copy of The Great Gatsby in his office rolodex, and, when he can’t get his computer working, he begins to read, becoming increasingly fascinated, until the world of his office is transformed into the world inside the text. Granted, a bit unlikely, even for committed students of Derrida, but then so is buying a mansion to live near someone you’ve been secretly in love with for five years.At times the exigencies of theatrical interpretation become too much to resist, as in the scene where Tom introduces Nick to his mistress at a raucous party in an apartment in New York. The shouts and jazz and clatter at times drown the text, and while it’s true to the spirit, the straining for the language it necessitates is distracting. But over the course of eight hours, these moments were the exception.There’s an almost Brechtian quality to the acting, resisting any excess of naturalism, and feeding the strange, integrative artificiality of the event. Shepherd as Nick has the sly, anodyne qualities critical to make the character of Nick work. Jim Fletcher makes a suitably incongruous Gatsby, in some ways highlighting the lack of interiority of the character, and possibly achieving what various actors have tried through the years: to convey Gatsby’s charisma as well as his fundamental emptiness.
Gatz runs at the Noel Coward Theatre in London until 15 July gatzlondon.com