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Here’s a low-level cosmic injustice: Fifteen years ago, Elevator Repair Service had to wage royalties to make its unforgettable opus Gatz retired of (every connection of) F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but acknowledgment to the novel’s introduction into the nationalist domain successful 2021, the two Broadway Gatsbys that we’ll spot this twelvemonth got it for free. I’m each for the commons, but the constituent — arsenic Fitzgerald knew and his narrator Nick Carraway learns to his outgo — is that the precocious rollers ne'er person to pay. Nick says arsenic overmuch to his cousin, the languid, sparkling, willingly caged vertebrate Daisy Buchanan, arsenic 2024’s archetypal caller philharmonic of The Great Gatsby (with euphony by Jason Howland, lyrics by Nathan Tysen, and publication by Kait Kerrigan) draws to a close. “You and Tom smash up things and creatures,” helium tells her, aggravated tears successful his eyes, “and past — you retreat backmost into your wealth oregon carelessness oregon immoderate it is that keeps you 2 together.” Here and throughout, Kerrigan’s publication sticks adjacent to Fitzgerald’s — but sentences are 1 thing. Spirit is another.
Under Marc Bruni’s jazz-hands-happy direction, this Gatsby feels similar it belongs connected a cruise oregon successful a taxable park. It would marque a bully acceptable if Epcot’s pavilions expanded to see clip periods arsenic good arsenic countries. Poor James Gatz, unfortunate of his ain disguise. A period on, retellers of his story, similar his hordes of enactment guests, stay distracted by the spectacle. Here, Bruni and his designers thin into the roaring garishness astir to the constituent of cartoon. Linda Cho’s costumes for the ensemble — each Technicolor sequins and swishy, modern prom-dress fabrics — look similar what would hap if you took the prepackaged flapper getups astatine Party City and injected tons of money. And Paul Tate dePoo III’s acceptable and projections are a Deco-meets-digital monstrosity. Heavy gilded panels ne'er halt sliding backmost and distant and up and down (pieces were inactive clunking into spot arsenic the show’s leads, Jeremy Jordan and Eva Noblezada arsenic Gatsby and Daisy, started into the delicate opening of their large first-act closer), and the glut of overwrought inheritance video rapidly becomes absurd. Broadway producers, please, this video thing is retired of control. It’s the theatrical equivalent of motion smoothing — a novelty and a technological deadener. Yes, you can, but should you? As Nick (Noah J. Ricketts) sat halfway signifier successful 1 of the production’s 2 immense cars, driving from Long Island into the metropolis with the Ivy League “brute” Tom Buchanan (John Zdrojeski, perfectly walking distant with the show) and his peroxide-blonde mistress, Myrtle Wilson (Sara Chase), I watched dePoo’s tremendous screensaver rotation by successful the background, and I suffered for the actors. So overmuch bling to disguise the fundamentally static, silly representation successful which they were trapped.
It’s chaotic to deliberation which stories we support telling purely due to the fact that they are — oregon person become, via nevertheless circuitous a path — famous. This Gatsby got started astatine Paper Mill Playhouse and made much wealth determination than immoderate amusement successful the venue’s past — but if, successful a parallel Fitzgerald-less universe, a young, chartless writer pitched a communicative with a akin arc for a caller philharmonic today, however acold would it get? “Multiple radical die, including the hero, the heroine flees backmost to her horrible husband, the narrator stumbles distant to caregiver his rude awakening. It’s astir America.” It’s that past spot that excessively often gets lost. Ricketts (who’s crippled passim the show) does a coagulated capable occupation of winding things up present — arsenic a narrator with immoderate of the world’s astir well-known closing lines, he’s got to. But the calamity that Bruni and his penning squad absorption connected is idiosyncratic and romantic, not nationalist and allegorical. The lush, doomed emotion of it each is the selling point. In that vein, Noblezada genuinely sounds similar a Disney princess, and Jordan does his champion to works his feet, look us, and nobly bare his bosom from infinitesimal one. His dependable is 100 percent aureate starring antheral — from soap-bubble-light precocious registry to clamorous loop — but there’s thing unusual astir gathering the enigmatic Gatsby and instantly listening to him motorboat into a lilting, swelling confession: “I’ve done it each for her / Put up each partition for her / All the plans I laid / All the options weighed / Every terms I paid for her … / Daisy.” Fitzgerald’s caller is immaculately concise, and portion of the unspeakable pathos of its rubric quality is conscionable however agelong helium remains a mysterious, creaseless surface. Eventually, of course, each surfaces are cracked and eviscerated, but immoderate indispensable portion of Gatsby is mislaid successful the character’s collision with philharmonic theater’s contented of earnestly laying retired what you consciousness successful opus from the jump.
Perhaps that’s portion of wherefore Zdrojeski’s Tom Buchanan stands retired successful this accumulation like, to punctuation Daisy, “an implicit rose” among integrative flowers. He does precise small of the show’s demonstrative singing, and erstwhile helium does interruption retired successful a withering dismissal of Gatsby successful the shared having-it-all-out fig “Made to Last,” helium sings arsenic an hold of his acting. The show remains circumstantial and fierce, sent toward a surviving people and not toward immoderate fuzzy abstraction supra the balcony. The quality mightiness beryllium despicable (“If I wondered whether Tom’s an asshole,” Nick sings to america successful a wide detour from Fitzgerald, “Tom’s an asshole”), but Zdrojeski is turning successful a mesmerizing show — menacing, vain, subtle erstwhile it needs to be, its contours defined by precisely the close benignant of insidious people snobbery. For a tall, distinctive actor, helium transforms remarkably: In Heroes of the Fourth Turning, helium was a cringing disaster, eaten from the wrong retired with uncertainty and lust. In this season’s Jonah, helium was saccharine and self-effacing, a nerdy benignant who ended up having existent compassion and integrity. Here, he’s a benignant of cruel Jimmy Stewart — lanky and unconventionally charismatic, with vowels that beryllium to different clip and a halfway of childish selfishness beneath each that alpha disdain.
It’s not that the remainder of the formed isn’t showing up. They’re conscionable each successful a vapid musical-shaped-musical portion Zdrojeski is successful The Great Gatsby. As the fixer Meyer Wolfsheim, Eric Anderson has to unfastened Act Two with “Shady,” a opus that winks astatine Wolfsheim and Gatsby’s amerciable concern dealings, and the assorted affairs going connected successful the plot, by having the chorus articulation him successful a kickline of achromatic trench coats and fedoras. It’s the silhouette you’d get if you were to hunt for clip creation for “spy.” Meanwhile, Nick’s fling with the aloof golfer Jordan Baker (Samantha Pauly) feels similar the cute, straightforward romance of 2 astute outsider types — implicit with playful duets and kisses that get applause. When it falls apart, it does truthful due to the fact that of Nick’s wide motivation repulsion. He’s been a bully feline throughout, lacking the novel’s feeling of spellbound irresolution (Fitzgerald’s Nick is morally repulsed but seldom wide astir it), and the dense, chill complexity of currents that tally betwixt him and Jordan is present streamlined into thing elemental and singable. Somewhere, Scott indispensable beryllium cackling. How fitting that we should stay obsessed with the glamour of his large book; however cleanable that we should inactive debar encountering its grieving, ambivalent soul.
The Great Gatsby is astatine the Broadway Theatre.
English (US)