The Great Gatsby: A New Musical

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Like a broken high school English teacher who’s lost all faith in a classroom full of scatterbrained students, the new musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby would rather, in as simple a way as possible, tell the audience what the green light means. There’s even a romantic duet titled “My Green Light,” which is consummated after a king-sized bed slides center stage. It’s an attention-getter that suggests our analogous, soon-to-be-unemployed high school English teacher also threw a couple of reruns from Dynasty and a few intimate memories of Las Vegas into the lecture. While this approach is certainly not as elevated as one of Fitzgerald’s complex metaphors, it sure is a lot of campy fun.

As for previous theatrical takes on the classic Jazz Age novel–and a few cinematic ones, too–the understandable allure of Fitzgerald’s breathtaking sentences has represented a deathly siren’s song for those tempted to dramatically interpret Fitzgerald by emulating him. Adopting a much smarter tack, book writer Kait Kerrigan avoids crashing into the tony shores of Long Island, where the story is mostly set, by remembering that imitation is not only the sincerest form of flattery but also usually very boring. Kerrigan still dutifully opens (“In my younger and more vulnerable years…”) and closes (“So we beat on, boats against the current…”) with the literary hits, also leaving in place the unhappy character arc of the novel’s Midwestern narrator Nick Carraway (Noah J. Ricketts), but she lets the transplanted naif enjoy a friskier journey arriving at the disillusionment that he eventually feels from witnessing the cruel machinations of the East Coast elite.

Nick’s temporary gratification includes buoyant cottage romps with Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly), a pot-stirring, amateur golfer whose bold feminism, Nick dejectedly learns, ends at the tip of her own nose. Although the novel leaves open the possibility of saying more about Nick’s sexuality, Kerrigan and lyricist Nathan Tysen unsubtly retreat from the opportunity, with Nick, in both dismissive dialogue and a disdainful tune, rebuffing the advances of the swinging Mr. and Mrs. McKee (Dan Rosales and Kayla Pecchioni), while listening to the supercilious Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski) having loud relations with his earthy mistress Myrtle Wilson (Sara Chase) in the offstage bedroom of Tom’s Manhattan pied-à-terre. Despite many of its freewheeling pleasures, heteronormativity remains dominant in this musical.

But that doesn’t mean the straight life is necessarily the cat’s meow, either, as Daisy (Eva Noblezada), Tom’s wife and Nick’s distant cousin, is forced to endure the aforementioned brazen infidelity, as well as physical abuse, from her hulking spouse for the sake of noxious, old-money conventions (beware the green light!). Her respite–and that’s all he can be–comes in the new-money form of the supposedly mysterious Jay Gatsby (Jeremy Jordan) who, when he first meets Nick, quickly confesses in the song, “For Her,” his years-long obsession with Daisy and what he’s doing to make it more than that: building a mansion; stuffing its ridiculously golden confines with a lot of expensive stuff; buying the finest caviar for huge parties he hopes she’ll attend. It’s like hearing a stalker’s lavish list of itemized expenses. There’s also no puzzlement about how Gatsby is paying for it all, given that his close associate Meyer Wolfsheim (Eric Anderson) opens the second act with the number “Shady,” in which, with bada-bing-bada-boom panache, he sings like a canary.

With apparently scant local options for making extramarital whoopie, Daisy succumbs to Gatsby’s conspicuous persistence, which shouldn’t be mistaken for charm, especially as Jordan portrays him. Despite possessing a lush tenor that sublimely heightens any note it touches (the music is by Jason Howland, Christmas in Connecticut, Paradise Square, Little Women), Jordan’s Gatsby comports himself like a striving bundle of affectations, somewhere on the self-confidence spectrum between a drip and no Robert Redford. That’s actually a perfect acting choice in director Marc Bruni’s production, which telegraphs from the get-go that Gatsby, a veteran of World War I, had more of a fighting chance in the European trenches than back home against the social sniping of patrician layabouts. Achingly awkward, every “old sport” Gatsby utters during one of his glitzy shindigs attests to the sad truth that he is both out of his element and desperate for a friend.

Set and projection designer Paul Tate dePoo III blends his prodigious dual talents to seamlessly visualize Gatsby’s nouveau-riche abode in all its tacky grandiosity while also creating an exquisitely eerie portrait of that green light across the bay. But dePoo proves himself willing to go beguilingly bonkers, too. That’s most evident when anyone stops off in a luxury car (that is actually drivable onstage!) at the garage owned by Myrtle’s dim, cuckolded husband George (Paul Whitty). While the Wilsons’ industrial neighborhood shouldn’t look like the bee’s knees, dePoo imagines the biblically named Valley of Ashes as quite literally a post-apocalyptic hellscape. Rather than arousing economic sympathy for the working-class Myrtle and George, the couple’s nightmarish surroundings primarily make one question how they’re not on fire.

Existing to haplessly churn the plot toward a denouement, Myrtle and George are otherwise entirely beside the point as the wealthy wage an internecine battle, where victory is apparently predicated on having forgotten the source of your ill-gotten gains. Before the decisive shot is fired, however, there are gorgeous, glittering costumes designed by Linda Cho and spectacular choreography by Dominique Kelley, with lots of energetic steps even coming from some doughboys who are absolutely not debilitatingly depressed. As always, nothing distracts from the inevitable like beauty. Or it would, if Nick would just stay quiet about “All of us holding onto the foul dust of our dreams so tightly, we can’t see straight.” What a wet blanket!

The Great Gatsby: A New Musical (open run)

Broadway Theatre, 1681 Broadway in Manhattan

For tickets, call 212-239-6200 or visit http://www.broadwaygatsby.com

Running time: two hours and 30 minutes including one intermission