The Select
(The Sun Also Rises) • Press
- DC Theater Scene March 1, 2017
- Shakespearences March 1, 2017
- DC Metro Theater Arts March 2, 2017
- The Georgetown Dish March 1, 2017
- Women Around Town March 1, 2017
- The Washington Post February 28, 2017
- Timeout New York September 11, 2012
- New York Times September 11, 2011
- The Irish Times September 30, 2012
- Timeout Boston March 17, 2011
- The Independent August 20, 2010
- The Scotsman August 26, 2010
- What's On Stage August 16, 2010
- The Guardian August 15, 2010
- British Theatre Guide August 2010
- Sarasota Herald-Tribune October 8, 2009
In The Moment: Elevator Repair Service’s ‘The Select (The Sun Also Rises’) at Shakespeare Theatre Company
By: David Siegel
Come April 7th, it will be a full century since the United Stated entered World War I or The Great War as it was known until WW II came along. The Air and Space Museum here in DC is having an exhibition including a marvelous selection of movies related to WW I.
But for those of us with a live theatrical bent wanting to encounter a production that is an absorbing, daring, imaginative, and straightforward about the aftermath of The Great War, and any war, I suggest, a visit to the Shakespeare Theatre Company is in order. It is there, and for a limited time, that audiences can savor a moving exploration of what happen to those witness war. It is The Select The Sun Also Rises created and performed by New York City’s Elevator Repair Service (ERS).
Walking into the Lansburgh Theatre, I couldn’t image how Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 literary classic about living with fatalism as your watch-word, The Sun Also Rises could ever be adapted into a vital theatrical performance without losing its “life-force” essence. What would Director John Collins do? What would be removed or made plain-vanilla? A bull fight on the stage? Really? I just could not conceive how Hemingway’s lean, spare language style would keep me engaged after a period of time. A book is one thing, I could turn the pages if I got bored, but a live production.
Let me start with this, that for me, the Elevator Repair Service production is way more than a play about a group of hard-drinking American and British expatriates traveling about from France to Spain, not long after the end of WW I. I took in the ERS production as one focused on any young men and women who were haunted by war time service. The production was not about “ex-pats” as much as angry wounded warriors suffering from PTSD who had experienced the first modern war. People who wondered what purpose their lives had after they personally witnessed combat that ended their innocence.
Read the original article here.