FIESTA Trafalgar Studios

Ernest Hemingway’s classic novel (aka The Sun Also Rises) is about the self-indulgent, boozy “lost generation” and is set in Paris and Pamplona in the 1920’s. Brett (Josie Taylor), a glamorous, promiscuous divorcée, is loved by three men: Jake (Gideon Turner), an expat American journalist, Robert (Jy Frasca), a Jewish novelist, and Pedro (Jack Holden), a 19-year-old matador. Brett loves Jake most but he is impotent, the result of a war wound; so things are difficult. Alex Felrecht’s much-condensed adaptation is not altogether satisfactory. There are, as you might guess, no bulls, and Hemingway without any bulls isn’t really Hemingway; but there is live jazz and the actors are good. The Jewish novelist would have been a great role for the young Woody Allen, especially in that amusing scene when he mistakenly presumes Brett fancies him.