The London Coliseum has long been home to an opera company so it is used to staging extravagant productions devoid of decent tunes. The Great Gatsby, a musical newly arrived from Broadway, is business as usual.
This year is the centenary of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel about lost love, class and the American Dream and the last hundred years have yielded several plays and films of The Great Gatsby. There’s a ballet and an opera. An animated screen version is in development. And now there’s this, directed by Marc Bruni, with a book by Kait Kerrigan, music by Jason Howland and lyrics by Nathan Tysen.
Jamie Muscato plays Jay Gatsby, the mysterious new money millionaire who lives on Long Island and divides his time between throwing wild, extravagant parties and yearning. The object of his yearning is Daisy Buchanan (Frances Mayli McCann), an old money socialite with whom he was once romantically involved. Gatsby recruits Daisy’s cousin Nick Carraway (Corbin Bleu) to facilitate a reunion. Tragedy ensues.
I was struggling to remember a song even as its last note was still ringing
This adaptation focuses on the novel’s romantic plots rather than its social themes. Gatsby longs for Daisy. Daisy’s husband Tom (Jon Robyns) is having an affair. Nick has a thing with golfing flapper Jordan Baker (Amber Davies).
It certainly looks spectacular. There’s a Roaring Twenties Art Deco aesthetic and the period costumes are beautiful. The sets, enhanced by projections, are evocative and elaborate, smoothly assembled and disassembled to create Gatsby’s mansion, Daisy’s home, a rundown gas station, a hotel. There are big, complicated dance numbers (choreography by Dominique Kelley) and the ensemble is absolutely on point.
(Image by Johan Persson)
The story-telling and characterisation are weak. There is no real sense of the hedonism of the party-hard set surrounding Daisy and Gatsby, for example. And given that this show is based on one of the great American novels you might reasonably expect it to evoke some sort of emotional response but the tragic beats of the book are skipped over. Also, while no-one expects, or wants, a Durkheimian meditation on class stratification, some acknowledgment of the novel’s weighty themes would have been welcome.
However, where the show really falls flat is the songs. The score is billed as “jazz and pop-influenced” but the numbers are mostly very old-school Broadway musical; big, bold ballads with lush orchestration, soaring crescendos and belted-out vocals. They blur into one another. The cast are in fine voice but they are poorly served by the bland melodies.
Audiences seeing a great musical for the first time go home with “America” or “If I Were A Rich Man” or “I Dreamed A Dream” firmly lodged in their brains. Here I was struggling to remember a song even as its last note was still ringing. At one point, I even wondered if a musical without memorable numbers was some sort of intentional metaphor for the moral emptiness of Jazz Age materialism, so deftly skewered by Fitzgerald in the novel. “For You”, Gatsby’s first act hymn to Daisy, is the closest we get to an earworm.
The Broadway Gatsby opened last spring and is a hit although, tellingly, its only awards have been for scenic design and costume design. An American tour is planned for next year so people are obviously going to see it — perhaps the reason is as simple as the fact that the title is well-known so it’s easy to market and, for tourists looking to take in a show, it’s an easy choice.
In London, for me, the most atmospheric part of the evening was before the show even began. Punters filing into the theatre are greeted by the sound of seagulls and the waves lapping on the shore and a backdrop depicting Gatsby’s view as he stands night after night, gazing across the bay to the twinkling green light — accorded great symbolic significance in the book — that hangs at the end of the dock of Daisy’s house.
There is currently another Gatsby musical playing in the US (the novel is out of copyright: kerching!). Gatsby: An American Myth has a score co-written by Florence Welch, of the rock band Florence and the Machine, and is, apparently, very different to this version. I’m gazing longingly across the water at that show’s green light.
The Great Gatsby at the londoncoliseum.org runs until 7 September.
