#HF11 'The select' is neat and well behaved and on stage lacks the raw emotion of Hemingway's novel

Would Prime Minister's anti-advertising Rutte cum suis by dismissing art as intended for leftist types and other idiots already have an effect? You would almost think so when you see the rather poorly filled halls during the performances at the Holland Festival. There are more than 10 people in the front row, but still it all doesn't hold up. Also at The Select (The Sun Also Rises) by the American group Elevator Repair Service, the old hall of Amsterdam's Stadsschouwburg was rather empty. This is odd, as the group had nevertheless made a good name for themselves with their performances of American literary classics in the past editions of the festival.

First it was the The Great Gatsby in the performance Gatz, followed by The Sound and the Fury. A feature of their performances is that they play the text as integrally as possible and hardly ever delete it, while still trying to find a theatrical form to add an extra layer to the novel.

This year the group can be seen with their version of The Sun Also Rises from Ernest Hemingway. In it, the author outlines a group of American and British thirty-somethings in Europe during the Interwar period. They hang out in cafés in Paris, go fishing in the Pyrenees and drink themselves to death during the fiestas around bullfighting in Pamplona. And they are bored. Bullish. At the centre of it all is party girl Brett, a hip British Lady with too much money and too much time who leaves an indelible impression on all the men she meets. She likes to take advantage of this, yet says she feels incredibly unhappy all the time. Between romance and boredom is a fine line in her case. All this is chronicled aloofly and ironically by the first-person narrator, the journalist Jacob, Jake to friends, who secretly loves Brett a lot too.

In a brown pub with an impossible amount of liquor bottles lining the wall - pars pro toto for the countless bars the group walks in and out of - Jake observes his group of friends and the boredom, irritations and jealousy that erupt during the bullfights in Pamplona. His observations Jake shares with the audience as a narrator.

Hemingway's detached, down-to-earth language matches the play style of Jake (Mike Iveson), who narrates with a very slight ironic dryness. It suits Jake's character who thinks all sorts of things about the parties and romances that take place before his eyes, but is unwilling or unable to put it into words. Certainly not when it comes to Brett. Yet that opinion does lurk somewhere between his words and his observations. Meanwhile, a motley cast of characters rolls across the café floor, with witty American taxidermist Bill (Ben Williams) in particular stealing the show. It is striking how even the most trivial roles take shape in the minutest of witty details: a barman skilfully juggles his bottle, a faggy bar-goer undresses the clientele with his eyes, while jauntily waving his scarf.

The acting style may be quite realistic - in its cinematic American style - but the group leaves few moments unused to ingeniously point out to the audience that we are indeed dealing with theatre here. Sound effects accompanying poured glasses or uncorked bottles are laid on thickly. Café chairs can serve just as well as the back seat of a taxi, a table is just as much a wild bull as a hotel bed.

The first part works that smooth narrative style, the witty and convenient use of pub furniture and the detached-realistic play style. But after two out of three-and-a-half hours, the play drags itself from café to café with increasing difficulty.

The point is that Hemingway has a lot of not says, but that the real meaning lies beneath the surface of his words. Beneath the boredom and sleaze lurk repressed emotions, machismo, blunt anti-Semitism and other such explosive material. The staging gives far too little account of this, as the performance is played so neatly and bravely. Hemingway has the climax take place during the swirling bull festivities dripping with masculinity and emotion for a reason. The Elevator Repair Service depicts those steaming parties with a neat dance and a droll bullfight with a bull dressed as a table. When the long-treated shy Jewish Cohn finally lashes out with his fists, the sound effects turn it into bland slapstick. Because of this bravado, the direction totally misses the raw emotion underneath and the real valuable tragedy of The Sun Also Rises lost. Proving once again that not all books are theatricalised in their American way. And that gut feelings are usually right behind the words. But Rutte cum suis already know that. They don't need to go to the Holland Festival for that.