The Renegade Theater Company production of “The Great Gatsby” opened at the Teatro Zuccone on Thursday, April 2. This dramatization of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s  1925 novel, created by Simon Levy (2006), runs Thursday - Saturday until April 18. If you are interested in serious drama on stage, I think you should try to fit this production into your busy schedule. The performance is quite powerful and outshines the plot, which has truly faded after the passage of ninety years.

Director Katy Helbacka imagined the characters looking back on their 1922 summer from a distance of seven years - in spite of the reality that three of the characters died tragically at the end of that fateful summer. Andy Bennett, as the narrator Nick Carraway, is consistently cool and reminiscent throughout the evening. He is definitely a survivor, and hopefully has matured appreciably because of that summer and the passage of time.
Jason Page, as Jay Gatsby, a young, millionaire boot-legger, is convincingly successful in portraying the shallow title character. His revived infatuation with Daisy Buchanan (Mary Fox) is phony indeed, which makes his murder - a completely mistaken identity - more meaningfully ironic in the larger context of the play. Gatsby’s life-style seems so very shallow here in 2015, that his murder is actually quite useful. Page was true to Gatsby’s character, never really in love, and better off dead.

As Daisy, Mary Fox learns a lot about herself as the play develops. She seems quite real, in love with her husband Tom, but a bit interested in the flamboyant dollars Gatsby likes to distribute. Gatsby’s death should resolve her ambiguities. Meanwhile, Zachary Stofer as Tom Buchanan is riveting throughout the play. Rich and bigoted, he is self-assured, and Stofer maintains a powerful tension every moment he is on stage. His self-assurance allows him to avoid being (rightfully) murdered, even as his mistress Myrtle Wilson (Maria DePesa) gets caught in the cross-fire.

I realize this is a bit confusing, but on the modest Teatro Zuccone stage, the actors share an incredible amount of crisp, if misplaced, drama, retelling this now famous story of false ambition and empty promises of an easy, money-driven lifestyle.

The novel is still better than the stage play, because of all the descriptive language above and beyond the meaningful dialogue. At the same time, as I have gotten older, this story has lost much of its apparent meaning. Shallow infatuations do not produce character growth. Flamboyant riches do not create satisfied individuals. Perhaps we can learn from that part of the 1920s and move beyond it. This intense staging by Renegade Theater Company is richly compelling. Shallowness is every bit as useless as it has always been. The imaginary snows of yesteryear are always melting away by reality, whether from Francois Villon in 1450 or from Francis Scott Fitzgerald in 1925. Good theater, on the other hand, is always welcome.