Review: The Select (The Sun Also Rises)

© Mark BurtoTry as I might, I find it impossible to appreciate the Elevator Repair Service’s aesthetic. This enterprising downtown troupe has made a significant name for themselves in recent years with their theatrical adaptations of classic Americans novels, of which The Select (The Sun Also Rises) is the last in a trilogy. But like the highly acclaimed Gatz and The Sound and the Fury (April Seventh, 1928), their versions of Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby and Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury, this staging of Ernest Hemingway’s classic 1926 novel is less interested in elucidating the text than in pointless gimmickry.

 

Thankfully, this evening isn’t a word-for-word recitation of the novel, as with the case with the butt-numbing, daylong Gatz. But it does contain vast chunks of the book’s exposition and dialogue, and the three-and-a-half hour long running time feels endless.

 

Hemingway’s novel, you’ll recall, concerns a group of expatriates whiling away their days and nights in a Paris bar. They include American journalist Jake Barnes, the narrator and the author’s stand-in (Mike Iveson); Brett Ashley (Lucy Taylor), a sexually ravenous Brit; and Robert Cohn (Matt Tierney), a Jewish novelist and former Princeton boxing champ. Add to that such eccentric as a dashing bullfighter (Susie Sokol, in a cross-dressing turn) and a flamboyant Spanish hotelier (Vin Knight), and you have a colorful array of characters.

 

Director John Collins’ staging fails to either convey the strength of the novel or add anything imaginative in place of it. Primarily, the piece seems designed to show off the sound effects wizardry of Matt Tierney and Ben Williams, who have provided an array of noises to complement the largely mimed action--liquid being poured into glasses, the thumps of a fistfight, the cheers of a roaring crowd, etc. With the production of these effects often fully displayed, the result is that you feel you’re attending the taping of a lavishly staged radio show.

 

The acting ranges from bland (Barnes, Taylor) to over-the-top (nearly all of the supporting players), and neither the performances nor the anachronistic costumes sufficiently convey the period.

 

Clearly, Elevator Repair Service is a company that one either loves--as the New York Times certainly does--or hates, as evidenced by the numerous walkouts during intermission. But while one can certainly admire their ambition, not to mention the sheer stamina required for these efforts, it’s less easy to take pleasure in the strained, marathon results.

 

New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. 4th St. 212-279-4200. www.ticketcentral.com.