Word: shepherd
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...ready for her memoir. But the story she's chosen to tell isn't about the rock-star years. It's a coming-of-age tale about a shy Jersey girl who falls in love with a lapsed altar boy from Long Island with "tousled shepherd's curls." He's Robert Mapplethorpe, future famed photographer and shrewd reprobate who would die of AIDS in 1989. As Smith tells us, "I would someday hold his ashes in my hand." After his death, his matter-of-fact pictures of leather S&M, with their strange composure, would...
...reader (Scott Shepherd), who transforms from an everyman office drone into “Gatsby” narrator Nick Carraway, casually begins reading the book on the pretext of waiting for his ancient, uncooperative computer to start up. Despite receiving odd looks from fellow employees, he continues reciting the text aloud. Soon, the play subtly shifts, and each one of the nobody office workers is cast in a role, drafted into the reader’s imaginary Fitzgeraldian world, where the romance, humor, and brutality of “Gatsby” are all poignantly real...
...funny. Often relegated to high school English reading lists, “Gatsby” has always been popular—but not necessarily understood. What is inevitably lost in the commotion of the American dream, unrequited love, and two tragic deaths is Fitzgerald’s humor. Shepherd manages to draw out the wit and sarcasm of the narrator, capitalizing on dramatic pauses and pointed glances at the audience. As he reads Fitzgerald’s exposition aloud, his earnest and deadpan drawl meshes well with the reflective musings of Midwesterner Nick, and Shepherd is instantly likeable?...
Where Nick is a detached observer in the novel, Shepherd’s narrator is the centerpiece of the production. Although Shepherd has the novel memorized, his intentionally stilted delivery—as if he really is reading “Gatsby” out loud for the first time—never betrays this feat until the end of the second half, in which he goes off-book for nearly an hour...
What is most remarkable about Shepherd, however, is not his memory, but his ability to evoke such complex emotion—he never forgets his performance in the mass of complicated text he must deliver. Even when his personality flashes from Nick to office worker, his seemingly inconsequential gestures are nuanced and deliberate. Shepherd looks continuously at a clock throughout the play, a tic that reveals its portentous significance when Nick recounts the timeline of Gatsby’s death. Shepherd’s skillful handling of his role is an accomplishment that dwarfs the rest of the company...