Review: Elevator Repair Service's THE SELECT: THE SUN ALSO RISES an Exuberant Celebration of Hemingway's Classic

There's something about Paris. Not sure whether it's the Pernod or the cocktails, but if Ernest Hemingway is to be believed, it's a place that practically demands misbehavior of the worst kind. Especially when it's a question of people sponging off other people's money. "Everybody behaves badly," says the protagonist of his classic novel, The Sun Also Rises, "Give them the proper chance."

Written from the perspective of a narrator-Jake Barnes-who is as reliable as he is deplorable, The Sun Also Rises tracks a small circle of ambitious writers and the one woman they all obsess over. They drink themselves into oblivion at The Select, their favorite watering hole, head down to Spain for some fly-fishing and end up in Pamplona for its famous bull-fighting festival (where the woman in question adds a teenaged toreador to the notches on her lipstick case). It's a slow-motion train wreck to be sure, but Hemingway has the knack for making this kind of self-destructive behavior compelling reading.

Elevator Repair Service, a New York company with a decided literary turn, has brought its lengthy but satisfying staging of Hemingway's first novel to Shakespeare Theatre Company's Landsburgh stage for a healthy Washington run. Their passion for verbatim theatre was last on display at Woolly Mammoth with "Arguendo," their Supreme Court drama, a couple years back. Here they wrap their collective talents around one of the great prose stylists of the 20th century. For Hemingway fans, this is reason enough to make a pilgrimage downtown; for theatre enthusiasts, even those who wouldn't normally touch Hemingway with a 10-foot-pole, the sheer exuberance and creativity of the ensemble should be a huge draw.

The Select: The Sun Also Rises is set, as the title indicates, primarily in and around the famous Paris bar that Hemingway & Co. frequented. David Zinn has decked out the stage with a tony, wood-lined bar, complete with upper shelves chock full of bottles and a "bar" upstage that also serves as the platform from which director John Collins (also a cast member) choreographs the many inventive sound and musical cues. (Matt Tierney and Ben Williams have developed a sound design that is as whimsical as it is tenacious). The long folding-leg tables where the drinking occurs appear, at first glance, to be a bit cheap; their purpose only becomes clear later on.

As Hemingway's alter ego, Jake Barnes, Mike Iveson projects the cool reticence of someone who has grown habituated to an aimless life. Iveson has mastered the art of silence, which is crucial to appreciating Hemingway's style, and the depth behind Jakes' laconic speaking style is evident from the very beginning. Jake has fallen hard for Brett Ashley, an exotic British import; because it is impossible for Jake and Brett to consummate their passion (an old war wound), he contents himself with chronicling her many conquests, duly noting the wreckage as one man after another is seduced and then ignored - not dumped, just ignored.

Brett is clearly Jakes' soul-mate, and they each possess the same alarming indifference to the damage they cause, along with the same unwillingness to change. As Brett, Stephanie Hayes gives us a free-love practitioner 1920's style; Hayes makes her irresistible and yet at the same time dangerous to know, with the same hollowness and remove as Jake.

As Robert Cohn, Jake's longtime companion and tennis partner, director John Collins gives us the introverted, truly lost soul of a writer who longs for fame but whose enthusiasms have brought him more than enough pain. His first flame, Frances - the fiery, unforgettable Kate Scelsa-has noted his loss of interest in her; Frances' rebuke of Cohn is an absolute show-stopper. And as we follow Cohn in his conquest (sometimes successful) of Brett, it becomes clear that he lacks the essential quality for the game-playing that goes on all around him: insouciance. Cohn, unlike nearly everyone else in Hemingway's orbit, actually has a soul; his constant pursuit of Brett from Paris to Spain is as self-destructive as it is pointless, and occurs even after she has added a drunken fiancée, Mike Campbell (played here by the electrically boorish Pete Simpson) to her already-loaded entourage.

Perhaps the most spectacular moment in the evening comes with the group's visit to Pamplona for its famous San Fermin festival, which they watch the bull run and impress the locals with their drinking prowess. Enter Pedro Romero, an ambitious young bullfighter who instantly attracts Brett's attention. Their courtship and hook-up are carefully staged--and of course this has consequences; Susie Sokol's portrayal of Romero is riveting in its silent dignity and its (transgender) eroticism.

Now, about the bull - it comes out of nowhere, and in a manner that would be blasphemous to reveal here. Trust me, you've got to see this to believe it, and the bullfight sequence-complete with the final sword in the spine-is a coup de théâtre you're not likely to forget.

The Select is chock full of eccentric characters-Hemingway even trots out an old friend (Bill Gorton, played with relish by Robert M. Johanson) who, allegedly, drinks more than he does-one suspects he's there to make Jake appear relatively sober. But as the action of this 3-hour production proceeds to the climax there is a moment that has a resonance Hemingway probably couldn't have anticipated in the mid-1920's: his friend Robert Cohn, beaten down by Brett's final rejection and infuriated by the insults hurled at him, erupts into fury and decks every man he can get his hands on. In the original novel, Cohn's insistence of accompanying Brett and her fiancée wherever they go is seen perhaps as a nuisance and a bit unhinged; his outburst, then, simply attests to his instability.

But events have quite overtaken The Sun Also Rises, and it is impossible to witness the insulting treatment Cohn receives without applauding his forceful response. The night I saw this production, news of a coordinated string of bomb threats directed against Jewish Community Centers across the country (not to mention the desecration of Jewish cemeteries) was in the forefront of everyone's minds. So although for Hemingway the outburst was simply one more symptom of the aimless, amoral lifestyle of his Parisian comrades, for us it has a very different significance; it may upend the story in some ways, but it's impossible to read without your own eyes.

Production Photo: Vin Knight as Diner, Mike Iveson as Jake Barnes and Stephanie Hayes as Brett Ashley in Elevator Repair Service's production of The Select (The Sun Also Rises) at the Shakespeare Theatre Company. Photo by Scott Suchman.

Running Time: 3 hours with one intermission.

Performances run through April 2 at the Landsburgh Theatre, 450 7th Street NW, Washington, DC. For tickets call 202-547-1122, or at: www.ShakespeareTheatre.org

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