Dara Solina Homer, Katherine Ladd, Ed Zephyr, Stanley Thomas and Cecily PierceKatherine Ridley

Quixotic, confusing and at odds with itself, Nathan Hardisty’s Trimalchio premiered at the Larkum Studio on Friday evening as part of the Papercuts series – rehearsed readings of new writing for Cambridge theatre. A meta-theatrical adaptation –seeking to capture the spirit of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby – it details the neuroses, frustrations and fruitless attempts of Mark: a self-professed white, middle-class writer in his twenties, to adapt Fitzgerald’s most misunderstood masterpiece for the stage.

For all that Trimalchio promises insightful opinions on the human condition and the way our lives, loves and ambitions find themselves reflected in Fitzgerald’s text, the dramatic novelty of this form does little to disguise its patently conventional style. Characters participate in long discussions about love, loss and the self, with statements that collapse under their casual analysis. We hear time and again how the lives of humans are composed of patchwork moments and cameos in others’ lives, and how our existence is far too complex to form a coherent narrative.

It would be possible to forgive the shortcomings of Trimalchio, if they were not so enthusiastically bolstered by the text itself. At one point, one of the female characters criticised Mark’s belated and unfinished play for failing to pass the Bechdel test, which garnered a few laughs from the audience at this self-referential example of humour. But Hardisty is true to his word. We are constantly asked to laugh at the ridiculousness of one middle-class, white man’s anxieties over his beloved work of art and later applaud his triumph at the finale. Hardisty clings to the coattails of Shakespeare, Hemingway and Fitzgerald, considering himself the moral superior for his literary self-loathing, and consequently fails to meet the promise of his previous offering, Losing My Religion.

The play was not, however, without merit. When Hardisty does not succumb to cliché, his writing offers a warm sense of humour and demonstrates a keen ability for structuring lengthy scenes of intimacy and introspection. The performances were equally well judged. The fragile and insecure Mark (Ed Zephyr) sat well against the grotesquely wealthy couple, the vivacious Frankie (Cecily Pierce) and the sardonic Gerry (Dara Solina Homer). Credit must also be given to the frustrated Nick, portrayed by Stanley Thomas. Last but not least, Katherine Ladd’s subtle, if not squeaky, Melanie, was the standout performance of the night. She afforded the play a moral heart and subversive voice of sincerity and kindness, though it was all too quickly suppressed by the brashness of Hardisty’s script.

Trimalchio seems, at first sight, like a great idea trapped in the body of a confused, overlong and unfinished work. When the abrupt and unsatisfying ending came, I felt exhausted rather than entertained by its cleverness. Like adaptations of The Great Gatsby itself, I feel there is a way for this play to meet the promise it demonstrates – through irony that illuminates, rather than irritates.