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A matador deftly avoids a charging table during "The Sun Also Rises." (Photo courtesy the Fringe Festival)

Storming onto the stage towards the end of the Live Arts Festival is New York company Elevator Repair Service with its rendition of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Sun Also Rises.” The epic retelling of the classic novel bursts with energy at its U.S. premiere.

The story takes place in Europe – mostly the cafés of Paris and the hotels, bars, and bullfighting rings of Pamplona, Spain – and centers around a group of 1920’s American expatriates with too much time and money on their hands.

They spend their hours carousing, drinking ungodly amounts of alcohol, chasing after one another, and looking for their next great diversion.

From its classic status you can trust that the novel itself is worthwhile. But what Elevator Repair Service does with it is extraordinary.

The play takes place entirely on the set of an elaborately portrayed café interior, but you forget that you’re looking at chairs, tables, and bottles when an actor simply lies down – now he’s in his hotel room – or picks up a fishing rod – now the banks of the Irati River – or when a big table dons horns and suddenly rears to life as a charging bull.

The transitions are so seamless that you take them for granted. Rather than getting bored with the unchanging set, you can’t wait to see the next magically creative transformation.

The surreal scene-shifting is accomplished by the company’s stellar and humorous technical choices as well as by the excellent actors who inhabit the space. The play, like the novel, is narrated by its protagonist, young WWI veteran Jake Barnes.

In its third take on a classic American novel (“GATZ,” a version of “The Great Gatsby” was a hit at 2007’s Festival), the company has again created the entire show using only the dialogue and narration from the original book. This challenge lends the performance a flavor of authenticity that most book-to-stage transformations lack.

Complete with raucous choreographed dance parties, dark secrets, impassioned lovers, pressing social themes, a whirlwind of action, and the company’s signature energetic vibe and surprisingly perfect sound design, the show is well worth its 3-hour-plus run time.

“The Sun Also Rises”
Arts Bank at The University of the Arts
601 South Broad Street
Now – Saturday, 9/18

2010 Philadelphia Live Arts and Philly Fringe Festival
September 3rd – 18th
www.livearts-fringe.org