Gatz, Noel Coward Theatre, review Great Gatsby! The complete, unabridged, word-for-word staging of F Scott Fitzgerald's 1926 masterpiece has arrived in London from New York, courtesy of Elevator Repair Service, an avant-garde troupe invited here for a short spell by the London International Festival of Theatre. The whole thing lasts more than eight hours, including three essential breaks. What, you can't help thinking, would Noel Coward, master of swift, succinct comedies, make of such a laborious-sounding proposition landing at the venue named in his honour? Actually, I dare venture that Coward would have been mighty taken with this jaunty, jazzily experimental marathon, much lauded since it trialled seven years ago. The company comes to excavate The Great Gatsby not to bury it in pretension. Their version has considerable wit, a consequence of Fitzgerald's epigrammatic style and the constantly inventive input of director John Collins and his cast. It glories in the power of theatre, as Coward did. And it also seems custom-built to withstand - and win over - the coolest English scepticism. It begins on a studiously mundane note. A ginger-haired man (Scott Shepherd) in a blue shirt, patterned tie and beige mac enters his rundown workplace, discovers that his computer has given up the ghost and starts reading - aloud - from the book he chances upon at his desk. Not only does he get engrossed in the novel - we do too and by a barely perceptible process his co-workers get drawn into the story, sketchy interjections gradually bleeding into full characterisations. Our continual book-in-hand reader becomes Nick, the narrator; one of the pretty young things who sorts the post (Susie Sokol) morphs into the sportily alluring Jordan Baker, his passing squeeze; the office grouch becomes the adulterous Tom Buchanan (Robert Cucuzza). And so on. The most morose guy around (tall, balding Jim Fletcher) plays the hangdog millionaire Gatsby, desperately seeking his old flame Daisy, now Tom's wife. Look at your watch, time has flown by and without any change of scene you've been transported to Twenties Long Island. This remarkable event more than repays the bum-numbing commitment. It's not just that every passage gets a light shone on it, allowing us to savour the detail - but that the whole is much greater than the sum of its parts. The first half attains a wild gaiety - without frills, the ensemble evokes ample thrills in put-on drunkenness and showers of jettisoned office-papers. But as the evening darkens with unhappiness, the potency of the show's double-life takes hold. "The party's over" is the final forlorn message, brought home by Shepherd, the lone lead, brilliantly intoning Fitzgerald's words by rote. In these straitened times, using the barest of means, that sentiment couldn't feel more bang-on-the-money. To July 15.