Reviews of Peter Gatz at the Project and The Wolf and the Goat at The Ark

Peter Gatz

Project, Dublin

NO ONE ENTERS into Elevator Repair Service's almost fabled show lightly, just as no one commits to a seven-and-a-half hour journey on a whim. With a concept as simple as it is preposterous, Gatz either captures the imagination or sends you scurrying for safety.

In a cluttered, timeless American workspace, an office drone begins to read The Great Gatsby aloud, apropos of very little, and with a trickle that soon becomes a torrent, F Scott Fitzgerald's story sweeps everyone into its service.

It's a novel idea, but to avoid becoming a staged read-through, or an endurance test, it must be so much more. The magnificence of John Collins's production lies not only in its fluency with the 1925 satire and how readily its jaded sensitivity chimes with the present, but also in its evocation of the entrancing act of reading and the competing distractions of reality. It is experimental but deeply reverent, sidestepping the issue of adaptation by including every word, and somehow, like its title, makes Fitzgerald's story seem more true to itself.

In an office of almost mesmerising drabness (Louisa Thompson's set is all dishwater greys, dull browns and jagged corners) the book emerges from a rolodex like a genie from a lamp. Performer Scott Shepherd intones from his dog-eared discovery with a warm, dry, but slightly chewed-up delivery. This initially seems like a misstep. Ultimately, it proves masterful.

Fitzgerald's text is boozy, sardonic, whiskey sour, and Shepherd's astonishingly unflagging narration as Nick Carraway matches its humane cynicism note for note.

Indeed, just as Scott defined the jazz age, Collins recognises where the real and fictitious should move in strict counterpoint or easy harmony. Ben Williams's virtuosic sound design, so essential that he executes it onstage, lets the chatter of New York traffic bleed into the prattle of Long Island crickets, and, as the fiction takes hold, costumes materialise, props appear and the office becomes a living palimpsest with the story roughly inscribed upon it.

That sense of double exposure is important, with every actor swathed in a narration that makes character discrepancies seem more compelling. Here Jim Fletcher, a performer with the physicality and delicacy of a stiff quarterback, makes an oddly satisfying Gatsby because there is continual pleasure for the audience's imagination in adjusting the narrative around him, or reading between the lines.

But just as an absorbing read mutes the world beyond its pages, when Shepherd reaches his final delivery - after almost a full working day in its company - the office is all but obliterated. As Nick contemplates America's discovery, untainted by excess, oblivious to approaching roar, he imagines man coming face to face "with something commensurate to his capacity to wonder". In its innumerable layers, its detail, its wit and generosity, that is precisely what the epic Gatz delivers.

Peter Crawley

The Wolf and the Goat

The Ark, Dublin

THE ARK, Dublin's cultural centre for children, is hosting a rather delicate goat and a somewhat sinister, if sartorial wolf, and no better place for them than this wonderful, seaworthy venue, moored on the cobblestones of Temple Bar.

Compagnia Rodisio, from Italy, has brought a subtle, somewhat ephemeral tale to young theatregoers with its (largely) English-language production of The Wolf and the Goat, a dreamy parable inspired by the Japanese novel, One Stormy Night, by Yuichi Kimura. This wistful tale concerns an independent-minded young goat, who dreams of escaping from her herd and riding coast to coast on a motorbike, and her encounter with an ironic, feisty and dangerously sexy wolf.

"I'll nibble and chew on you," threatens Mr Wolf, his eyebrow arched and the collar of his very black suit rakishly angled, but the young vegetarian lady goat in her lacy white dress and pristine white tights remains undeterred, determined to hold on to her dreams of escape.

The Wolf and the Goat could be a metaphor for just about any yin-and-yang thing you could pull out of your psyche, and while an adult viewer may read much into the burgeoning relationship between the beasts as they shelter in an isolated hut from a storm on a pitch-black night, the young audience seemed gigglingly content to contemplate the usual fairytale carnage that ensues whenever there is a wolf about, and looked vaguely disappointed when the tale ended without bloodshed and with the youngsters being asked to contemplate their own ending to the staged encounter.

This visually alluring piece is performed by two actors, and there is an intelligent, provocative humour at work. Enchanting rather than energetic, more tantalising than thunderous, this play will probably work best for younger children and adults. At certain ages, subtlety is about as welcome as a bath and an early night.

Hilary Fannin

Until Oct 5th