The musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby on tour this week at DeVos in Grand Rapids makes good on its extraordinary promise of recreating Jazz Age opulence.
Lush Art Deco sets, layered with real set pieces (including a yellow Rolls Royce and a blue Coupe with whitewall tires), beautifully painted drops, and extraordinary projections that are so crisp they appear to be in HD create as much texture as the gorgeous flapper costumes—sparkly, shiny, fringy, feathery, velvety—in complementary colors for different scenes, different parties that really move and come to life with terrific dancing inflected with Charleston, Black Bottom, Foxtrot, and shimmying moves as well.
The show is a most delightful, perfectly crafted visual display that utterly glorifies post World War I, prohibition-era jubilance before the bottom fell out and easy money gave way to the Great Depression.
It’s every bit the wild party theatre goers dressed in their best drop waist fringe dresses with headbands and smart three-piece suits with two-tone wing tips came to celebrate.
But other than that marvelous stylishness, there’s little to fully recognize from the source material. The musical, though a sumptuous, riotous, impressive display, uses the characters and basic plot to turn a classic, tragic novel into an overly slapstick romantic comedy, albeit one that also includes manslaughter and a murder-suicide, and in so doing loses the complexity of character and poignant larger themes.
The narrative is familiar. Narrator Nick Carraway (Joshua Grosso) has arrived in New York City from the Midwest to try his hand at finance after completing his service in the war. He rents a cottage on Long Island belonging to Jay Gatsby (William Bishop), an enigmatic, wealthy elite and secret bootlegger known for hosting epic parties, who also longs to be reunited with old flame Daisy (Senzel Ahmady), Nick’s cousin, who is married to Tom Buchanan (Will Branner), a philandering “brute”. Conflicted, but charmed by Gatsby, Nick helps arrange a reunion, after which a hopeful love affair ensues. But Tom becomes suspicious of Gatsby’s past, and when Gatsby pressures Daisy to leave Tom, the social fabric unravels, the party ends, and three people end up dead.
With book by Katie Kerrigan, music by Jason Howland, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen, the situation and plot are true to the novel, but in the musical, Nick’s narration diminishes in the second act, and instead of his insights that provide complexity and critique to the situation, particularly to the character of Gatsby, the romance is falsely developed through sweeping ballads in which they explain their feelings: Daisy in “For Better or Worse” and Gatsby in “For Her”.
Bishop as Gatsby and Ahmady as Daisy can really sing; however, they don’t have much chemistry together. He’s so silly in his lovesickness for her in “Only Tea”, and her consist broad smiles and excessive hand gestures belie authentic emotion. She also swallows her words and sounds more like Mae West than a socialite from Louisville. It’s downright confusing when all of a sudden the stakes change and we’re supposed to believe there’s something meaningful between them in their duet “My Green Light” at the end of Act I.
Though there are some fun, jazzy numbers in the first act to punctuate and distract from the lack of character development, Act II really razzle dazzles. The orchestra, led by Music Director Charlie Alterman, is terrific. The ensemble is top notch and the dance numbers fantastic, particularly the big tap number in the sparkly, spectacular “La Dee Dah With You” featuring high-energy performances from Anna Gassett, Josiah Hicks, Tyler Johnson-Campion, and Macy McKown as The Sugars.
This show absolutely knows what it’s doing when it’s unabashedly throwing a party, but dramatic scenes consistently have a tone problem. In the high-valence scene where their emotional lives are coming to a head with Gatsby telling Tom Daisy never loved him, there’s no gravitas. However, the depth comes in quick succession thereafter with a confrontation between Tom’s pregnant mistress Myrtle (Lila Coogan) and her husband George (Justin Scott Brown) that ultimately leads to tragedy upon tragedy. Coogan and Brown are both excellent and leave us wanting more.
Scenic and projection design by Paul Tate DePoo III, costumes by Linda Cho, lighting by Cory Pattak, choreography by Dominique Kelley under direction from Marc Bruni make The Great Gatsby musical a gorgeous period piece that captures an extraordinary moment in time with a larger-than-life, wonderfully indulgent feast for the senses.
But the storytelling falls short of the novel’s genius, and in so doing misses a remarkable opportunity to say something meaningful about our current moment in American history, one in which the rich keep getting richer, particularly the billionaires running our democracy. What Fitzgerald might have to say about that through these characters’ tragedy would be something well worth reimagining. That’s not what this one does, though it sure puts on a fabulous party.
The Great Gatsby
Broadway Grand Rapids
July 21-26
grandrapids.broadway.com
