The Select

The Elevator Repair Service is presenting their latest work, The Select [the Sun Also Rises] at the New York Theater Workshop.  They are the inventive company that did "Gatz" last year at the Public.   The Sun also Rises is Ernest Hemingway's first novel and considered by many to be his best.  Written in 1926, one year after 'The Great Gatsby'.  According to the New York Times Hemingway's book has never been out of print and is believed to be the most translated of all novels.  The story is about a group of expatriate Americans and British living in Paris.  They travel to Pamplona for the festival of Fermin, the bullfighting and the running of the bulls.  The book was first called Fiesta, then The Lost Generation [a label used by Gertrude Stein about expats after the war who were living in Paris] and then The Sun Also Rises from the Biblical quote "What profit hath a man for all his labor under the sun?  One generation passeth away and another generation cometh: but the earth abidith.  The sun also ariseth and the sun goeth down and hasteth to his place where he arose."
The plot: Jake loves Lady Brett and she loves him, but Jake was wounded in the war and can't perform.  Lady Brett has affairs with Mike, then Cohn, then Mike again and then the bullfighter Romero.  Everybody drinks too much.  They fight.  Romero is badly injured in the fight but has a successful day in the ring and he and Lady Brett go off together.  Eventually she contacts Jake who rescues her from a seedy Hotel.  They talk about their love for each other and what might have been.  Then Lady Brett marries Mike.  During the story they drink a lot, dance some, then drink some more.  Some of them go on a fishing trip and drink.  I mean like 3 or 4 martinis and 3 or 4 bottles of wine each with lunch.
It did not work as a drama.  3 and a half hours of waiting for something to happen or some beautiful language, nada.  Cohn is Jewish and characters use anti-Semitic epithets about him and to him.  There are some gay men at the cafe in Paris and "faggot" is used.  Hemingway's characters aren't just crude they're not interesting.  They have nothing to say.  OK, maybe that's the point, but it would have gone over a lot easier if I could have joined in the drinking.