The Sun Also Rises

Written by Caroline Whitham | 17 August 2010

Hemingway – boring, dry and overly obsessed with masculine pursuits? If this sums up your opinion on the works of the man they called ‘Papa’, this new production of The Sun Also Rises by the Elevator Repair Service will do little to dispel that conclusion.

Clocking in at almost four hours including interval, this production feels padded beyond all necessity. The trick of an onstage narration by the protagonist, Jake Barnes (Mike Iveson), serves to describe action rather than showing it, and becomes tiresome within the first few minutes. The old maxim, “show, don’t tell” has been utterly thrown out of the window, and the audience is treated to endless scenes of Jake philosophizing. Surely this is the exact opposite of what Hemingway wanted to achieve with his sparse prose? I felt like I could have read the book more quickly.

That is not to say that the production is entirely without merit. The set is ingenious, scattered haphazardly with glasses of the various types of alcohol the characters are forever swilling. The actors, especially Iveson and the elegant Lucy Taylor as classy love interest Lady Brett Ashley, are compelling and fully inhabit their parts. The sound effects are driven on-stage, mostly by Matt Tierney who also plays put-upon Jew Robert Cohn, and Pete Simpson who is delightful as Brett’s upper-class fiancé Mike Campbell. When Ben Williams arrives as Bill Gorton, he provides a puff of fresh air in what has by this point become a very stuffy room.

The main issue was the narration, which has obviously been dubbed necessary because of the various elements of the story that are difficult to perform within the constraints of the theatre. However, the company had already found ways around this problem – Jake becomes a commentator at the bullring, for example, describing Pedro Romero’s battle with the bull. Surely something similar could have been done in other places? At least an hour’s extraneous material could have been shed in the process, and the whole thing would have been quicker, tighter and harder-hitting.

I left the theatre hot, drained and exhausted, much as the characters must have felt during their interminable plod through the Pamplona fiesta. If this was a deliberate choice, bravo. It takes a ballsy company indeed to inflict that level of mental fatigue on an audience, all in the name of veracity.

Royal Lyceum Theatre, 14-17 Aug, times vary