Can’t repeat the past? A compelling ‘Great Gatsby’ thinks you can.

The original script was short, only 35 pages, and the set, made largely of discarded furniture, was improvised and minimal. The audience entered a fire escape, over the roof and through the back of the building to a replica drugstore speakeasy. Scheduled for just four weeks in 2015, production reemerged the following year in two new spaces. In 2017 it was part of the Vault Festival in London. The show continued, first in a former carpet factory and then in a more luxurious building on Bond Street, where, bar a temporary pandemic break, it ran until January. It has spawned offshoots in Belgium, Ireland, Wales and South Korea.

Wright and his producers, Immersive Everywhere, have long had a desire to bring the show — which uses group as well as more intimate scenes and selected one-on-one encounters to bring “Gatsby” to life — to New York. When the novel entered the public domain, it was finally possible. Louis Hartshorn, an executive producer, toured many spaces—derelict office buildings, closed music venues, factories, warehouses—before settling in this Midtown ballroom, a 16,000-square-foot blank and dusty canvas. The central location appealed, as did the high ceilings. Multiple exits and pre-existing toilets were a plus. The Park Central Hotel was also where mobster Arnold Rothstein, the inspiration for the novel’s sinister Meyer Wolfsheim, was fatally wounded in 1928. Hartshorn signed in May last year; he got the keys in July. Previews would begin in December.

To bring this “Gatsby” to the city where it’s set, Wright said, “amazing, inspiring, humbling, a little intimidating.” It was also a challenge. Recreating the glory of the 1920s requires a very contemporary permitting process and technology, and can run into supply chain issues, which help explain the six-month delay.

“There’s a lot of infrastructure behind the opulence,” Hartshorn said.

The ballroom’s electrical systems needed to be modernized. There were some bad surprises (like learning that the ballroom also needed new HVAC), but also some good ones. The room was carpeted, but when workers pulled up the carpet, they discovered an elegant terrazzo floor. And while it was too expensive to replace the not-quite-period chandeliers, they could be repurposed as part of the lighting design.