Last Thursday evening, twenty members of Elevator Repair Service, the downtown theatre company, met at a multiplex in Times Square, collected twenty pairs of 3-D glasses, took escalators to the sixth floor, and occupied two rows of seats in the middle of a mostly empty theatre for a showing of Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby.” E.R.S. created “Gatz,” the eight-hour theatrical version of the Fitzgerald novel, which sets the action in a drab office, among workers who bring the book to life as it’s read aloud, word for word; the production is short on cloche hats, flappers, and pearl strands and long on textual authenticity. E.R.S. has been performing “Gatz” around the world since 2005, and many people in its cast and crew have much of the novel memorized. “We did the original 3-D version,” Lucy Taylor, who played Daisy Buchanan in the West End run last summer, said. Baz Luhrmann and, later, his stars, Leonardo DiCaprio and Tobey Maguire, had seen “Gatz,” in 2010; now “Gatz” was about to see them. The mood was giddy and a little nervous.
Vin Knight, who plays Chester, a photographer with a shrill wife, and Owl Eyes, a party guest who makes a wonderful drunken speech in Gatsby’s library, had given his popcorn an extra application of butter and salt midway through the bag. “It’s a special occasion,” he said.
Gary Wilmes, who plays Tom Buchanan, arrived just before the previews started.
“What’s up, gonna-be-a-psychiatrist-on-‘Homeland’ guy?” the actress Colleen Werthmann, who did “Gatz” ’s costumes, called out.
Wilmes demurred. “Shh,” he said.
“I read about it in the news today!”
“You did?”
Susie Sokol, a schoolteacher and a founding member of E.R.S., who plays Jordan Baker in “Gatz,” shook her head when offered 3-D glasses. “I don’t want ’em,” she said.
Mike Iveson, who plays Klipspringer, Gatsby’s piano-playing boarder, fiddled with his 3-D glasses, moving them on and off his head. “It’s kind of creeping me out,” he said. “If I have a panic attack—”
“What will inspire your panic attack?” Werthmann asked. “Will it be too much beauty?” During a 3-D preview, a butterfly fluttered off the screen, and she reached out to grab it.
“Gatsby” began: mournful twenties music, the green light at the end of the Buchanans’ dock. Cast and crew were quiet, their glasses on. Wilmes had his hands over his mouth.
“In my younger and more vulnerable years, my father gave me some advice,” Maguire, as Nick Carraway, said, his voice creaky. Accurate so far. “Always try to see the best in people.”
Incredulous laughs; some groaning. “Oh man,” Werthmann said quietly.
“This is killing me already,” Iveson whispered.
“We can’t get upset whenever it’s different,” Kate Scelsa, who plays Lucille, said. (They were expecting something closer to “ ‘Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone,’ he told me, ‘just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.’ ”)
Luhrmann had put Nick Carraway in a sanitarium, as a framing device; as Nick told his doctor about West Egg, a pensive figure was illuminated in a high tower. Maguire, in a lugubrious voice-over, described “riotous amusements that beckoned from beyond the walls of that colossal castle, owned by a gentleman I had not yet met, named—”
“Norman Bates,” Iveson whispered.
“Gatsby,” Maguire whispered.
Wilmes laughed when his character, Tom (Joel Edgerton), yelled “Shakespeare!” when he greeted Nick, and whacked him in the crotch. The story progressed in a whirl of glitter, ashes, feathers, green lawns, balloons, and fascinators—some of it emerging, in 3-D, off the screen. The “Gatz” cast whooped at Luhrmann’s more startling touches: Tom saying to Nick, at a sleazy party, “I know you like to watch”; Leonardo DiCaprio’s début as Gatsby, to a blast of “Rhapsody in Blue” and with a skyful of fireworks; revellers in a car on the Queensboro Bridge dancing to Jay-Z’s “Izzo (H.O.V.A.)” (Werthmann sang along); the cheerful response of a Times Square cabbie when Nick got in and said “Long Island.” The biggest reaction came at the end of a pivotal scene—mayhem at the Plaza Hotel, during a hot afternoon party, in which Tom confronts Daisy and Gatsby. Nick says to Tom, in the novel and onscreen, “I just remembered that today’s my birthday.” Here, Luhrmann added a line, growled by Tom: “Happy Birthday.” To the “Gatz” crowd, this was the equivalent of a Schwarzenegger zinger that preceded a hail of gunfire. They laughed and yelled.
As the movie drew to a close, Nick finished a book he was writing, called “Gatsby.” When he hand-wrote “The Great” over the title page, people groaned. The lights came on.
“Happy Birthday,” Knight said.
“That was a very well-researched addition to the text,” John Collins, the director, said. He looked both riled-up and worn out.
The theatre was labyrinthine, and exits were elusive. “This is like Gatsby’s house,” Wilmes said, looking for an escalator. Someone suggested a direct route: the elevator. After the first half of the group went down, an alarm bell sounded.
“Oh no,” Scelsa said. “Are they stuck?”
“And we’re the Elevator Repair Service,” Sokol said.
Once safely outside, everyone headed to a restaurant on Forty-second Street for a late dinner. Scott Shepherd—who plays Nick Carraway and knows the whole book by heart—joined the group, having seen the movie the week before. “It made me want to buy a yellow car and drive over a watermelon,” he said.
Knight sipped a Negroni. “I will say, I thought it was gorgeous,” he said. “But I thought there would be more 3-D. I thought that at the party, there was going to be, like, pearls swinging in your face.”
Opinion was divided about Carey Mulligan, as Daisy. Steve Bodow, a past artistic director of E.R.S. who now co-executive-produces “The Daily Show,” said, “In Chapter 1 especially, she was plausible as the girl you’d feel that way about. She was pretty good at the Plaza, too.”
“She was more of a waif than Daisy is,” Wilmes said.
“I think that’s what Daisy’s supposed to be,” Bodow said.
“I wanted to feel like I would steal, rob, do heroin for this woman, or Gatsby would, and I didn’t quite feel that,” Wilmes said. “Maybe it was the script. We didn’t get to know her too well. It’s easier to fall in love with someone when you know them.”
“Are you a heterosexual man?” Sclesa said.
“You know what I would like to see?” Wilmes asked. “If we were all given the budget Baz Luhrmann had, and we each made our own movie, how would it compare?”
“We could each make our own chapter, and it would still be eight hours long,” Knight said.
“I just feel like it would have been more interesting if he had been on tour with us for seven years,” Wilmes said.
The proprietor came to the table and introduced himself to Wilmes, who had called ahead for a table. “How was the movie?” he asked. “Was it a Hollywood blockbuster?”
“It was everything we could have imagined it to be,” Wilmes said.
Photograph: Warner Bros.
