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The months-long cheesy poster campaign for this Broadway musical adapted from Scott Fitzgerald’s novel of wealthy amorality in the Roaring 20s had me fearing the worst. In performance this Gatsby turns out to be a sleek, ravishingly designed ocean liner of a show, with enough musical oomph and vocal power to distract you from the hollowness at its heart.
The score by Jason Howland blends pop-power anthems with Jazz Age influences and even a little ragtime; Nathan Tysen’s lyrics are deftly witty, though Kait Kerrigan’s book tends towards the portentous.
It’s staged with pizzaz by the original Broadway director/choreographer team of Marc Bruni and Dominique Kelley. Strong performances from Frances Mayli McCann’s Daisy Buchanan and Amber Davies’s Jordan Baker make up for the insipidity of Jamie Muscato as the titular antihero and Corbin Bleu as our narrator, Nick Carraway.
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Fitzgerald’s critique of the aimless, careless rich here becomes a romantic fantasy of lost love almost recaptured. Bleu’s amiable doofus of a Carraway blunders into the monied milieu of Long Island, a short Rolls ride from Manhattan. At one end of an idyllic bay his cousin Daisy is complacently married to the brutish, unfaithful Tom Buchanan; across the water, the mysterious Jay Gatsby throws orgiastic parties he never attends in the hope of regaining the attention of Daisy, who he knew as a poor young officer shipping out to the Great War.
Seldom has this plot, and Gatsby’s miraculous self-reinvention, seemed more fantastical. The millionaire’s mansion, a blend of art deco and intimidating Metropolis modernism, seems to have been conjured out of the air, like a Disney palace. Ditto his off-the-peg personality, all smooth tailoring and “old sport” courtliness. Muscato’s voice has great depth and a powerful sustain but it’s hard to play a blank. It doesn’t help that the chorus of his signature love song For Her sounds a bit like Barry Manilow’s Mandy.
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The novel’s subtle study of morality and power imbalances, particularly between the sexes, is flattened and coarsened. Still the show rolls over you like a juggernaut. The design is truly dazzling, from the filmic rear projection to the automobiles that slide on and off to stage to the flapper frocks: if there’s a sequin shortage in this year’s Strictly, we’ll know why. (The costumes are by Linda Cho, who won a Tony on Broadway, and the set design by Paul Tate DePoo III: I really hope his mother was called Winnie.)
Kelley’s choreography gives a frantic edge to Charleston and Foxtrot moves, as if these people are truly dancing on the edge of a precipice, and he supplies a terrific tap routine for the blithely flirtatious showtune Lah Dee Dah With You. The second-act opening routine, where swirling trenchcoats accompany Shady, sung by the gangster-bootlegger Wolfsheim, is baffling though.
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Wolfsheim is played with villainous relish by Les Mis alumnus John Owen-Jones, one of many heavy-artillery voices at Bruni’s disposal. Mayli McCann matches Moscato in richness, sailing forcefully over Daisy’s contradictions until her devastating closing number Beautiful Little Fool. Rachel Tucker brings both fire and crushed dignity to Tom Buchanan’s side-piece, mechanic’s wife Myrtle.
Davies injects much-needed acidic wryness to the whole thing as Nick’s independent love interest, amateur golfer Jordan Baker. She also looks great in wide-legged pants. Bleu is too teddy-bearish as Nick but has fun with the archly funny lyrics of The Met, where Nick fantasises about a museum visit while listening to Tom and Myrtle schtupping.
This is a big, brash show that fills the cavernous Coliseum. If it’s also a little empty beneath the razzmatazz, perhaps that doesn’t matter.
To 7 Sept, londoncoliseum.org.
