So while I missed the supposedly life-altering-transcendent-6-hour Elevator Repair Service rendition of “Gatz,” I was happy to see their take on Hemingway last night. The Sun Also Rises is one of my favorite books, and what was great about the play is that it’s less about adapting the story to the stage and more about exploring the literal text through theatrical techniques. The entire play is essentially taken from the book verbatim, and the visual staging and sound design only added to experience of the text. When The Festival is introduced via a five minute hip-pumping dance anthem it’s hard not to get caught up in a feeling of exhaustive exuberance very much present in the book. But reading is such an internal experience that to see it expressed on a stage with actors, while sitting in an audience, is quite gratifying. The best moment, of course, came at the end. It’s hard not to hear the line “Isn’t it pretty to think so?” without getting shivers. It’s one of the most perfect sentences ever written. And sitting in the theatre I was able to experience that again, because of the characters who said it on stage and what it meant to them, because of the way that sentence felt the first time I read it alone in a dorm room, because I remember reading them for a second time in a crowded subway, and all these moments were connected by the words themselves, spoken aloud.
