As I was flipping through the booklet for Singapore Arts Festival 2010, I was looking for four shows to purchase in order to enjoy the highest early bird discount. First three choices were not too difficult to make – Cloud Gate, Peter Brook and Maybe Forever are easy choices for me … and Robert Lepage would have made my decision process completed except for the reason that I will be away on that week.
When going through the booklet the second time, Gatz inevitably caught my attention with keywords like ‘The Great Gatsby’, ’6 hour-long’, ‘Are they reading the book or is it reading them?’ and ‘experimental’. Eventually, it got my wallet share.
22 May Sat show was quite filled, to my surprise. I ran into Serene and chatted briefly. She tried to re-read the book before attending the show but failed halfway cos ‘the book was not that easy to read’. That I totally agreed.
I recalled the reason I started reading the book a zillion years ago … it was because it was mentioned in Haruki Murakami‘s novel, Norwegian Wood. I was just beginning to be fascinated by Murakami and really wanted to know why he gave such high praise of The Great Gatsby in his own novel (through the words of the protagonist, that is). Frankly, I could not say I enjoyed reading The Great Gatsby then.
But this time the ‘reading’ of The Great Gatsby proved to be so much more enjoyable. Despite the text that were written for the purpose of being read, here is a creative team who clearly understand the mechanics of theatre space and crafted enough to deliver and preserve the beauty and nuances of the text, while not forgetting to inject humour of their own. They obviously enjoyed making the piece and that in turns entertained the audience greatly.
I tried to reason with myself why it worked, for me:-
1. Scott Shepherd who is the one reading the whole novel, has a soothing and expressive voice.
2. The ensemble casts were greatly skilled. Impeccable comic timings.
3. The ‘piano guy’ Klipspringer played by Mike Iveson was hilarious. I was most amazed by his precision in his execution … i could actually ‘see’ the imaginary piano he was playing on.
4. At one point, an audience walked down the staircase and out of the theatre. Shepherd happened to be pausing at his reading. His gaze followed the audience out of the theatre and then turned to the rest of us with a half smile, as if to say ‘i agree with you. what the @#$% are the rest of us doing this for?’ That expression had me LOL.
5. What was magical and thus most enjoyable for me was the realisation that I was not just watching a world created by a novelist, but also a world of his readers having fun reading his novel.
6. The last 20 min or so of the piece proved to be most daunting for me. I suspected the director would like to direct the audience focus back to the text, for Nick’s (the main protagonist) introspection after Gatsby’s murder. Shepherd was the only one stayed on stage and reading. While he was still awesome in his recital, I still wished that the director had added more treatments to help the audience though Nick’s final mental journey, especially after 6 hours into the show …
At the end of the show, I had a euphoria not unlike after watching last year’s Long Life … they would stay in my memory for quite a (long) while.
