THE GREAT GATSBY

 I’ve never really appreciated F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby as “the best American novel ever written” but I was willing to take a chance on hearing a spoken word version of it in the Adelaide Festival. All 8 hours of it (starting at 2pm and finishing at 10.15pm with some breaks). Gatz was developed by the New York based Elevator Repair Company in 2006 and has been touring, with many of the same cast, on and off ever since. I went with no particular expectations having given myself permission to leave at any time if I was finding it tedious.

And I didn’t. I stayed. I’m not in the same five star category as the Guardian reviewer but I did find it an absorbing work.https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/mar/15/gatz-review-the-great-gatsby-performed-in-eight-and-a-half-hours-of-attentive-immersive-joy?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

The most impressive element of the work was the performance by the lead actor Scott Shepherd playing the office worker who starts reading “The Great Gatsby” when his computer won’t start. Over the hours, his office colleagues join in and speak the words of other characters such as the wealthy Easterners, Tom and Daisy Buchanan, and the hero of the story, Jay Gatsby. Shepherd reads beautifully and, I suspect, knows every word of the book by now.

What irritated me was some of the directorial choices that elicited cheap laughs from the audience, casting choices such as a 60 year bald man playing Gatsby (which made his relationship with the young Daisy creepy), and ultimately some of the views of Fitzgerald himself. Of course, it’s a book published in 1922 but the casual racism and anti-semitism and the inbuilt misogyny is hard to take these days. 

Having noted these challenges, there were some some stunningly directed scenes such as drinks at the home of Myrtle and George Wilson and the scene at the Plaza Hotel where Gatsby urges Daisy to say that she never loved Tom. Bold, effective performances on the set of a tired 1980s office.




Luckily, the newly refurbished Her Majesty’s Theatre has very comfortable seats so that the time passed comfortably if not quickly.



I’m glad I saw it and thankful to the staff at Lot 10 Cucina & Bar that quickly served up a delicious pasta in the short dinner break.



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