Soon to celebrate its centenary, The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald is a literary classic. A depiction of the times in which it what was written, the Roaring Twenties, the story centres on a mysterious playboy, Jay Gatsby, whose lakeside mansion gazes over the water towards a similarly ostentatious property owned by the Buchanans. Driven by enticing Daisy Buchanan, his first love from years past, back into his arms, the reclusive Gatsby throws wild parties and befriends his new neighbour, Nick Carraway.
Now given a innovative stage adaption in Hungarian with English surtitles at the Vígszínház, The Great Gatsby starred Robert Redford and, more recently, Leonardo DiCaprio, in its Hollywood film versions. Here in Budapest, József Wunderlich plays Jay.
We Love Budapest: “How easy is it to be part of a Hungarian version of one of the most revered works of English literature?”
József Wunderlich: “We didn’t feel duty-bound to follow the story faithfully throughout, that wasn’t our aim. We break up certain scenes, all in rapid tempo, to maintain excitement”.
“We felt at liberty to interpret The Great Gatsby as we saw it. We wanted to take it further, deeper into the character and the storyline."
"Some Hungarians in the audience might know the recent film but perhaps not so many have read the book. If this were an adaption of the Paul Street Boys, for example,” – a subject close to József’s heart as he appears in a themed musical performance of Ferenc Molnár’s classic children’s book here on 23 November – “then everyone knows what happens to Nemecsek, Boka and so on. This isn’t so much the case with The Great Gatsby.”
WLB: “What for you is the essence of Jay Gatsby, his character?”
JW: “His is the love, his is the absolute belief, that in a way is completely absurd, almost surreal – because the person he loves no longer exists, she belongs to the past. He is prepared to go to every extreme, and is prepared to lose everything, to recapture what he has lost – yet what he has lost he can never get back”.
If I could turn back time...
“He is someone trying to put back together broken pieces of his past. Those precious moments he had with Daisy are gone. This is a man who thinks he can turn back time. This throws up vital questions. Should a man do this? Can he? And what is the price that he, or anyone else, has to pay?”
WLB: “Robert Redford, Leonardo DiCaprio… No pressure?”
JW: “No, I don’t feel that I’m under this kind of pressure. I really like Leonardo DiCaprio, I thought he was great in The Wolf of Wall Street, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood and The Revenant – but somehow I felt that the 2013 version of The Great Gatsby was a pale version, that the film didn’t go deeply enough into the characters. It was a very showy production, but if you take the key scene where Gatsby meets Daisy at Nick Carraway’s, for example – and there aren’t, in fact, that many scenes in the book where Gatsby and Daisy are alone – you don’t get the sense that this is a man hounded by years of frustration, whose entire destiny is slipping through his hands”.
“In the book, there isn’t much actual conflict between the main characters, actually – so much of it is internalised.”
WLB: “What kind of modern parallels can you draw with the story?”
JW: “We try to show how in today’s image-conscious world of Instagram and Facebook, a person can present themselves to be who they want. Who is Jay Gatsby anyway? That’s not even his real name and, as we later find out, he didn’t even go to Oxford”.
Image and identity
“For how long can someone pretend, to lie to the world that they’re someone they’re not? Just for power, money or, in this case, love? Is it that worth it? At what point do they say, ‘Sorry, that’s not me’?”
“For me, the key dialogue is near the end when Daisy and Jay are driving home, and they accidentally hit Myrtle, Daisy’s husband’s lover. They start to argue, and she says, ‘I’m not that Daisy any more,’, and he says, ‘But you are, I know you are!’. That’s when you realise the whole situation is out of his hands.”
The Great Gatsby
Vígszínház, District XIII. Szent István körút 14
Saturday 3 October & Sunday 4 October at 2.30pm & 7pm, then until 19 November
Details & tickets here
