The Select (The Sun Also Rises)

Last season, the innovative theater company Elevator Repair Service gave us the fascinating "Gatz," a marathon stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's classic novel "The Great Gatsby," set in a dreary office. This season the group has topped itself with an even more exciting theatricalization of a great American work of fiction. While "Gatz" was somewhat gimmicky, the new piece, "The Select (The Sun Also Rises)," derived from Ernest Hemingway's lean and mean examination of U.S. expatriates boozing and screwing their way across 1920s Europe, makes the transition from page to stage with a higher degree of grace under pressure.

The conceit in the previous work—company founder and artistic director John Collins staged both—had a bored clerk reading Fitzgerald's text aloud and his co-workers playing all the other roles with gradually increasing conviction. This concept initially came across as forced, with the cast giving broad, comic interpretations of their iconic roles until they were deep into the text, but allowed the author's glittering prose to stand on its own. "The Select," the name of one of the many Paris cafés the characters frequent, takes place in set designer David Zinn's cozy and well-stocked wood-lined bar, where Hemingway's lost revelers are at a perpetual party, imbibing prodigious amounts of alcohol and dancing like maniacs to Matt Tierney and Ben Williams' multilayered sound score. There are a few exaggerated sound effects and slapstick touches as numerous cocktails are poured, but they don't feel like artificial elements forced into a realistic setting (as similar shtick in "Gatz" did). Here the basic concept is a riotous soiree where the participants play endless games to fill the gaping void within. The lives of Jake Barnes, Lady Brett Ashley, and their companions are all performances, so the heightened theatricality makes sense.

There are several deceptively simple yet effective staging touches. For instance, a climactic bullfight is brilliantly conveyed by the petite female actor Susie Sokol as Pedro Romero, the teenage male matador, and a taller, muscular actor (Williams) who pushes around a long table with a pair of horns attached to it. In another clever coup de théâtre, when the orgiastic Spanish fiesta ends and Jake and his circle must face the consequences of their reckless behavior, the bar is removed to reveal the unadorned sound board for the show. The illusion of endless gaiety is shattered.

The capable cast fully inhabits this rudderless crew, fleshing out Hemingway's minimalist prose. I can recall despising Brett, the aristocratic British siren who discards men like tissues, when I read the novel. But the bewitching Lucy Taylor makes her such a charming vixen that you can understand why all the males crawl after her, even when she treats them like dirt. As the narrator and autobiographical figure Jake, Mike Iveson avoids the macho, bullying Hemingway stereotype and delivers a vulnerable, compassionate man who desperately seeks a moral center in an immoral world.

Williams captures the hidden tenderness within the blustering Bill Gordon, Jake's cohort in drinking and fishing. Tierney effectively chronicles the isolation of Robert Cohn, the Jewish outsider of the group, while Pete Simpson manages to make Mike Campbell, Brett's alcoholic fiancé, both lovable and swinish. In the most challenging role, Sokol crosses gender lines with ease in portraying the hypermasculine yet almost femininely beautiful bullfighter. There are also numerous comic moments provided by Frank Boyd, Kaneza Schaal, Vin Knight, and Kate Scelsa in multiple roles.

Presented by Elevator Repair Service and New York Theatre Workshop at New York Theatre Workshop, 79 E. Fourth St., NYC. Sept. 11–Oct. 23. Tue.–Sat., 7 p.m.; Sun., 1 and 7 p.m. (Additional performances Sat., Sept. 17, 1 p.m., and Wed., Sept. 28, noon.) (212) 279-4200 or www.ticketcentral.com.