‘Great Gatsby’ review: Broadway musical messes up beloved novel
Theater review
THE GREAT GATSBY
Two hours and 30 minutes, with one intermission. At the Broadway Theatre, 53rd Street and Broadway.
Forget East Egg and West Egg. The creators of the new musical “The Great Gatsby,” which opened Thursday night on Broadway, have laid an egg.
This song-and-dance version of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s enduring 1925 novel about, among other things, American excess in the aftermath of World War I is excessive all right.
The gaudy barrage of clone ballads by composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen (“Paradise Square”), indiscriminately handed out to any character who wants one, blare like a foghorn on the Long Island Sound.
And the attractive art deco sets by Paul Tate dePoo III are so opulent and oversize that I had a flashback to watching “King Kong” in the very same theater six years ago.
But now, a monkey isn’t captive — your favorite novel is.
Inferior “Gatsby,” directed bigly by Marc Bruni, is a hodgepodge of many other shows that came before it.
During an impressive all-company tap number called “La Dee Dah With You,” the show briefly ventures into “Anything Goes” Land. Many other bombastic songs have the volume, if not the tunefulness, of gothic musicals like “The Secret Garden” or “Jekyll & Hyde.”
What “The Great Gatsby” almost never brings to mind, though, is “The Great Gatsby.”
The musical, a patchwork quilt of discordant styles that belongs in a box, becomes the latest in a long line of adaptations of this beloved novel to mess up a story that’s far more satisfying to read and imagine. It completely misses its intoxicating atmosphere, meaning and layered characters.
One of the rare smart decisions of the night is the casting of Noah J. Ricketts as our man Nick Carraway, a modest Midwesterner who moves to a Long Island cottage in “new money” West Egg.
The actor has a pretty voice and a naturally easygoing persona that contrasts with the cartoonish East Coast impressions on display that are akin to what Katharine Hepburn might have behaved like as a chauffeur.
Nick’s cousin Daisy (power-singer Eva Noblezada) is married to Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski), and they live, in artificial bliss, across the water in upper-crust East Egg.
Awful Tom is having an indiscreet affair with Myrtle (Sara Chase), the wife of garage owner George Wilson (Paul Whitty). A knowing Daisy sings a lilting number in the garden about her rocky marriage called “For Better or Worse.”
“Worse?!” I thought.
Nick’s greatest object of fascination is the mysterious, loud-party-throwing inhabitant of the mansion next door to his house. That’s Jay Gatsby, who just so happens to be Daisy’s old flame that still longs for her.
As the enigmatic title character, Jeremy Jordan, when in song, sounds like a million bucks, even in walloping numbers such as “For Her” and “Past Is Catching Up to Me.”
When he speaks, however, one must adjust for inflation. The actor cakes on an ill-advised mid-Atlantic accent that boggles the ears. Rather than contribute magnetism and mystique, the shaky brogue turns a literary icon into a weirdo.
During a scene in which he reunites with Daisy, a dumb ditty called “Only Tea,” the musical suddenly about-faces into a cheesy farce.
An army of servants arrive with trays and floral arrangements as though they’re about to start singing “Be Our Guest.” Nick and Daisy’s acidic pal Jordan Baker (a detached Samantha Pauly) do cute bits in unison. Gatsby attempts to hide from Daisy behind a small tree branch to get a laugh.
The multiple personalties pile on a song later when we’re suddenly tossed into an absurdly passionate love story as the pair sings a drippy duet called, oy, “My Green Light.”
The second act, thankfully, finds a more consistent and appropriate tone. One would hope so, as there are several deaths in quick succession.
Early on, that aforementioned tap dancing, choreographed by Dominique Kelley, is thrilling, even if it’s a short-lived distraction from the many, many head-scratchers.
For instance, an inordinate amount of time and music are given to Myrtle and George, who are turned into a much sadder Adelaide and Nathan Detroit. Expensively staged, Myrtle’s fate is unintentionally funny.
There’s also too much of sleazy criminal Meyer Wolfsheim (Eric Anderson), who gets a jazzy back-from-intermission song called “Shady” that could have been cut. Why not focus on enriching the main characters before giving everybody else their five throwaway minutes?
Theater and film rarely know what to do with “Gatsby.” They often decide, as this musical sometimes does, to focus on the escape to sexy speakeasies with flappers.
But the best version I’ve seen was Elevator Repair Service’s “Gatz” downtown. Every single word of the novel was read out loud over several breezy hours by actors wearing nothing more than office garb. Audiences were entranced, not by schlocky love songs but the unadorned words of a great American novel.
Last year, New York got an immersive “Gatsby” experience that quickly closed. This summer, another musical take by Florence Welch will premiere at the American Repertory Theater in Massachusetts.
The quality of the Florence & the Machine singer’s adaptation remains to be seen. But, even though Fitzgerald’s book is in the public domain, let’s cool it on giving so many “Gatsby’s” the green light.
