THE Fleeting Arms, the offbeat pop-up theatre and arts residency in an empty Gillygate pub, came and went last year and ironically the pub is still awaiting a future, but the greatest Fleeting success lives on.

What’s more, it lives on not only in York but in a parallel production in the Theatre Delicatessen deli in Sheffield with writer-director Alexander somehow in the Wright place at the Wright time to have overseen both productions.

The York one has retained last winter’s cast with two new additions and relocated to 41 Monkgate, the home of Upstage Centre Youth Theatre and now also Pick Me Up Theatre, whose artistic director, Robert Readman, has lent his considerable design skills to transforming the black-box John Cooper Studio Theatre into a dynamic modern theatre with a mezzanine level.

York Press:

Amie Burns Walker’s Daisy Buchanan and Oliver Tilney's Jay Gatsby on the stairway to....? Picture: Steven Eric Parker

Both stairwells now service the theatre, making for a grander entry for audiences, and for The Great Gatsby Readman’s trademark shabby chic designs – rather than Baz Luhrmann’s gilded palace in his recent film – furnish not only the Cooper Studio but plenty more rooms besides that house the more intimate scenes to complement the Studio set-pieces.

Invited by Jay Gatsby (Oliver Tilney) to dress up for “my little party this evening”, revellers must make their way up the stairs to the Drugstore, where the Trimalchio Twins (Imogen Little and Tom Leiby) – later to parade their acrobatic and dancing skills – will serve you whatever on the rocks.

Before you know it, you are immersed in F Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s’ whirl of lust and liquer: “a place of mischief, of secrets, of splendour and debauchery”, as Michael Lambourne’s narrator, Nick Carraway, introduces himself to two partygoers and gradually his voice rises until everyone is listening to him.

York Press:

Michael Lambourne as narrator Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby. Picture: Steven Eric Parker

One by one, Fitzgerald’s “unreliable witnesses” make their way into the room: Phil Grainger’s troubled dreamer George Wilson; Thomas Maller’s volatile Tom Buchanan and Amie Burns Walker’s Daisy Buchanan; Holly Beasley Garrigan’s dancer Jordan Baker; and Hannah Davies’s play-away Myrtle Wilson, each striking up conversations with the “guests”: an open invitation for you to adopt a name, an American accent, maybe even create a character for yourself.

Suddenly a curtain is pulled back and there, looking down at his swell party, old sport, is Tilney’s dapper, elusive Gatsby. We are all Charleston dancing now, and don’t get in a flap if you can’t do the moves, just go with the flow.

Now the play breaks out of the Studio and you must follow your instincts as to who to follow: maybe you will end up with Myrtle and George, amid the smell of tyres, as they argue over the ashes of a failing marriage; or Buchanan and Myrtle in one of their trysts; or perhaps join in a card school.

York Press:

Phil Grainger as George Wilson in The Great Gatsby. Picture: Steven Eric Parker

You cannot see everything but, as if propelled by magic, you will be where it matters, such as for Gatsby and Daisy’s first meeting in five years. Later, the curtain will be used to devastating effect once more; all the while, the soundtrack takes in jazz, lonesome piano, Otis Redding, even Kate Tempest, amid the “choreographed chaos”.

A theatrical experience like no other, The Guild Of Misrule’s The Great Gatsby is now an even greater Gatsby.

The Guild Of Misrule in The Great Gatsby, 41 Monkgate, York, partying until January 7; doors open at 7pm each night. Box office: 01904 623568 or at yorktheatreroyal.co.uk