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The Great Gatsby (London Coliseum, West End & Broadway Theatre, Broadway) - ★★★ REVIEW
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Mickey Jo
As they say atop the souvenir cups that you can buy at the Broadway Theatre where the show is currently playing in New York. Something great is coming to Broadway and I always think that the next line underneath that ought to read but we got here first. Oh my God. Hey, welcome back to my theatre themed YouTube channel. Or hello to you if you are listening on podcast platforms. My name is Mickey Jo and I am obsessed with all things theatre. I'm a professional theatre critic here on social media. I travel around the world seeing as much theatre as possible and then I talk about it on the Internet. You can find me everywhere that you use the Internet basically. And today, after seeing the show four times, including its first ever performance, the world premiere production at Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey, then twice on Broadway, and now earlier this week in the West End, I am finally going to be discussing what I think of the Great Gatsby, the musical based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Or should I say one of the musicals based on the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, as there are a small handful of them. This particular show, with a score by Jason Howland and Nathan Tyson and a book by Kate Kerrigan, opened last year at the Broadway Theatre in New York and has just recently made the transatlantic crossing to the Coliseum Theatre in the West End where it opens this very week. And in something I haven't done in a little while, I'm going to give you a full overview of the entire show, both productions, and every cast member that I've seen in it. And these are thoughts I've wanted to share with you for a really long time. So I'm very excited for this one and I'm also excited to find out what all of you think about it as well. Please let me know in the comment section down below what you think of this show, where you've had the chance to see it, and if you enjoy listening to what I have to say, then make sure that you are subscribed right here on YouTube with the notifications turned on so you don't miss any of my other upcoming reviews or following me on podcast platforms or other social media platforms. In the meantime, let's talk about it. Just how great is the Great Gatsby? So I want to take you briefly back to when I saw the very first performance of the world premiere production Pre Broadway at Papermill Playhouse in New Jersey. Everything that had been released from press calls and rehearsals hadn't filled me with enthusiasm about the material, so I wasn't going in with the strongest sense of expectations. I will Never forget jumping to my feet at the start of the intermission, looking to one of my friends across the auditorium and the two of us mouthing at the same time. This is good in kind of flabbergasted surprise. And that's because it is. It's a good show. I'm not here to tell you that this is not a good show. It is entertaining as hell and it is crowd pleasing and it is delivering on almost all of the fronts that a lot of people expect when they go to see a Broadway musical, or indeed a West End musical, because it's flashy and it's bright and it's colorful and it's passionate. And they are singing these huge, demanding, vocally audacious and emotive pieces of music. And you have this rapturous love story and there's tragedy and there's angst and there's passion and there's a big kiss that you can applaud. And they're also doing a lot of things that you might not expect in your run of the mill Broadway musical. They're driving cars across the stage, there are fireworks happening, there are these huge dance numbers, there are these lavish costumes. It looks like a million bucks on stage. And that's because it is a million bucks on stage. And it sort of reminds me of shows like the Phantom of the Opera and the Lion King that has such great visual storytelling and is so exciting to look at that, you know, it might have a huge appeal among non English speaking audiences and tourists, which feels like a surprising thing for me to say about something based on a classic American novel. And perhaps if this wasn't based on a book and it didn't have so much depth and substance and imagery and so many layers that it could be evoking, then I might honestly be giving this a slightly better review. But it's as an adaptation of the Great Gatsby that it faces a little bit more criticism because it is not the greatest Gatsby that you're going to see. I affectionately refer to this as just a Good Gatsby. And it reminds me of the idea of if Dreamworks had made an animated the Great Gatsby film in the 90s. Specifically, this feels like the stage adaptation of that. Musically, it feels familiar of that. And in terms of the depth of character and storytelling as well. In short, it's a little shallow, it's a little superficial, it's a little color by numbers. But it's also wildly entertaining and an easy show to enjoy and a very easy show to recomm to people, especially if they're looking for that first very musical theatre kind of entertainment. Now, before I carry on and we dig a little bit more into the creative elements and the performances that bring this show to the stage, I will give you a little bit of an overview of the narrative. If you aren't familiar with the story of the Great Gatsby. Now, our protagonist is not actually Mr. Gatsby himself, but a young man by the name of Nick Carraway, who has recently moved to Long island from the Midwest, having returned a few years previously from the war. This is also taking place shortly after the Spanish flu, which is invoked a little bit in this musical adaptation, if only to kind of remind everyone that they weren't in a dissimilar place. To us, one 1920s post pandemic age is not entirely unlike the other. Now, Mr. Carraway has been offered lodging in the grounds of a Long island mansion owned by Jay Gatsby, who hosts these extravagant parties, though remains something of a mystery because nobody has necessarily seen him there. These parties are not attended by his neighbours across the Long Island Sound over in East Egg. East Egg being the more respectable old money dwelling, while West EG presents new money in the nouveau riche. Only we come to find out that it's these same neighbors who are exactly the people that Gatsby is trying to reach out to. Specifically Daisy Buchanan, formerly Daisy Fay, who is also Nick Carraway's cousin. She has married a man who Nick went to school with called Tom Buchanan, and the two of them are keeping up appearances despite an unhappy marriage. They recently had to move away from Chicago due to another of Tom's torrid affairs, which, sadly for Daisy, continue now that they are in Long Island. He has a mistress named Myrtle Wilson, whose husband owns a gas station in the Valley of Ashes. Very much working class individuals, but believing staunchly in the American dream and in the hope of prosperity. Gatsby has his own sort of interpretation of the American dream because he has been able to accrue an extraordinary amount of wealth with the specific intention of rebuilding himself in the image of the kind of man who could marry his childhood sweetheart, Daisy. We also meet a close friend of Daisy's, an amateur golfer and feminist named Jordan Baker. And when Gatsby invites Nick to meet with him at one of his parties and entreats him to broach a meeting between himself, Mr. Gatsby, that is, and Daisy, everyone soon enough becomes entangled in this web of relationships and affairs and lies and hope. Add in a couple cars And a lot of tuxedo jackets and you get the Great Gatsby. But let's talk a little bit more about how this production chooses to bring it to the stage, and let's first focus on the material. So it's in the material that we're going to find a lot of my largest criticisms about this particular piece. Like I said, the score has been written by Jason Howland, who wrote the music, and Nathan Tyson, who added the lyrics, and Kate Kerrigan wrote the book. Musically, it's interesting because for the most part, it feels neither sort of timeless enough that the sound doesn't matter, nor does it feel specifically linked to the 1920s setting. Instead, it has this pseudo contemporary feel that is a little familiar of like 90s R&B. The greatest conclusion that I can draw here is that they were hoping to evoke the feel of, like, hitting it up in da club and kind of likening that to Gatsby's parties and wanting those parties to feel as energizing and dynamic as they would feel, you know, in a contemporary context. The song New Money has gone semi viral over social media, both because of how catchy it is and also because of this piece of choreography. And it's a song that I have mixed feelings about. I think it sort of typifies the mixed feelings that I have about this score because it does convey that excitement and that energy of dancing in a modern club setting with your friends and being at a wild party. There's also a little section in the middle that does pay homage to a very kind of 1920s style. And you see it happening in the choreography. At the same time, they sort of switch into that gear. I wish the score played with that more. Not unlike in the soundtrack of the Baz Luhrmann movie version from just over a decade ago. Lyrically, there's some really great stuff in this song. When Jordan sings the line, the rich are riche and the money is nouveau. I love that. I think it's playful. I think it's witty. I love less when we get into the real climax of the song and we just add on the lyrics. We ride, we ride, we ride. Where are we riding? What are we riding? What's happening? Back on the positive side, however, the internal rhyme of in west egg, there's no nest egg. Thrilling to me. And then on the other hand, again, there's a lot of really important exposition delivered in this fast paced section that we just aren't capable of hearing as meaningfully as we need to. This really probably ought to be delivered in the book. But the fact that they're singing about Gatsby's mystery and absence at his own parties in that section, and it's so hard to discern, I think is a real shortcoming of that particular moment of exposition. Here's a bunch of details you should probably know, things that really matter for the rest of the show. But the highlights of the score certainly the big soaring, emotional ballads delivered by Jay Gatsby and Daisy and the song for her in which Jay is singing her name at the top of his range. Singing Daisy. Beautiful, stunning. I think my favourite song in the score and really deserves to live on in the pantheon of great musical theatre songs. I prefer it a little to his Act 2 ballad, the Past is Catching up to Me, although that one seems to be getting a little more traction in the musical theatre world. I don't know what it is about that song versus for her that is making it more compelling. I don't know if it's because there's a little bit more vocal gymnastics involved to do with the ending of the song, but I don't actually think the central lyric really makes much sense, nor does it tell us anything we don't already know about his character and his ambitions. At this point, we just sort of stop the narrative in order for him to once again sing about how in love he is when that's been his entire raison d'etre, the entire time, and everything about his material is focused only on her. Also for her kind of avoids this problem, but specifically in that one as well as in the act one song that Daisy sings. For better or worse, the orchestrations and the melody make it feel very much like not just a Disney song, but the kind of credits version of a Disney song that you would hear in the 90s. Like specifically the slightly more R and B ified version. I'm thinking of like Someday from the Hunchback of Notre Dame credits. I'm thinking of like the credits version of if I Never Knew you and the Celine and Peabody Bryce and Beauty and the Beast. Like that's where a lot of these songs live and it's a really peculiar place. What gives it that 90s DreamWorks Disney feel? It's as though faced with uncertainty about whether to make the sound authentically 1920s or contemporary 2000s, they landed somewhere unevenly in the middle. The lyrics of the songs are also very emotionally declarative, a little emotionally honest. And the thing about this story is it's all about the complexity of love. Gatsby expects A very black and white answer from Daisy. He wants her to say to her husband that she never loved him, never at all. And she only has ever loved Jay, as he has only a ever loved her. And he wants that kind of perfect conclusion to their story, their story that got interrupted when he had to go away to the war and returned with his letters to her, having been intercepted by her father, who didn't approve of the relationship, to find out that she had married the wealthy Tom Buchanan. And he was devastated. Unfortunately, he finds out that it's all a little more complicated, a little more nuanced than that. And so the material ought to be able to convey that complexity and that nuance, but it doesn't really. These are all such emotionally straightforward and obvious ideas conveyed in the lyrics. A great example of where this really falls down is at the end of act one, when Daisy and Jay sing another sort of pseudo R and B orchestrated duet, my Green Light. And there's a beautiful moment in the original Great Gatsby story as he's showing her around this mansion that he's built for her, essentially. And she sees his collection of shirts that he has imported, and he tosses them into the air, conveying how silly it is, how lavish it is, wanting to impress her, but also casting them aside because they don't really matter. None of this is as important to him as making her her happy, as doing this for her. And as all of these shirts are flying around the room and landing on top of her, she has this moment of sadness. And the line here from F. Scott Fitzgerald is about Daisy bowing her head and being overwhelmed by all of this and saying, it makes me sad because I've never seen such beautiful shirts. And I don't think this is meant to be interpreted in a frivolous sense, like being overwhelmed by all of this wealth and all of this luxury, because she also leads a very privileged life. In the Baz Lemon film adaptation, it was specifically underscored that I think it was like a lifetime of missed opportunities faltered on her lips. And that was all that she was able to say. Except the problem is, in this musical, she's already sang a verse to him about, like, I thought that you were gone. I thought you'd disappeared. She's already poured out all of her feelings very openly and very plainly. So we don't have this beautiful complexity of her not quite being able to say what she really feels. We don't have the same kind of tragedy in there. And what's the point of her only being able to Talk about the shirts. When you've already sung a verse, like if you can sing it to the man, you can probably say it in the dialogue as well. And yet those are not my least favorite lyrics in the show. For those, we have to head into the second act when Gatsby is very eager to recreate the circumstances under which he and Daisy met in order to remind her of the love that they had. So he brings back the same woman, Gilda Gray, who was singing at the Officers Ball where they danced together in Louisville. And what's hilarious about this, what's truly just objectively very, very funny, is he introduces her by saying her songs. And this music is what got me through the next few years. So you'd expect for us to hear something like the heartwarming and like meaningful. And she sings this up tempo song that's really one of your very generic, like we're gonna dance in a musical songs. And whatever we're singing barely matters. It's called La dee Da and the lyrics are literally, let your hips go la dee da dee da while my lips go la dee da dee dee. It is as though they were pitch song in the writing process and they were like, so this song's gonna go something like. And they went, no, no, no, let's not even write lyrics. That's already there. That's fine. And the notion that la de da di da as actual lyrics are what gave a young Jay Gatsby the strength to persevere in the war. Like he's in a trench somewhere, rocking backwards and forwards, dealing with horrors unimaginable and, you know, remembering la dee da dee da. Obviously he's remembering dancing with Daisy and that's what's really motivating him. But it's just silly. Don't even get me started on the conclusion of that lyric. I want to la de da di da with you. I can't even go there. But ultimately, it isn't Gatsby and Daisy's romance that I have the biggest problem with in this show. It's Nick and Jordan's. And you can decide for yourselves. And everyone has a perspective I've discovered on this. Whether or not these are characters with queer undertones who ought to now be in 2025 in new adaptations of the Great Gatsby, you know, enriched with the full queer context that they deserve. Certainly Nick idolizes Gatsby and is really fascinated with, even obsessed by him. And certainly the tropes with which Jordan is written in the way that she is characterized really invokes the idea of a queer woman who couldn't have been out in society at the time, but who rejected the idea of marriage and who was a passionate golfer who didn't want to wear a dress and was wearing these gorgeous palazzo pants. And those traits are still very much evident in these characters in this version. But somehow they end up together and they get paired off and they have a couple of moments and songs singing about their relationship and we, we absolutely just don't care about these two. It just seems like, you know, it's a sitcom and we need to also pair off the B characters. This is a short lived romance however, because and there are substantial spoilers coming here. If you don't want to know what happens at the end of the show, skip to the next section where there will be fewer spoiler. But right at the end, after they've had this tense meeting at the Plaza Hotel where Gatsby tried to get Daisy to leave her husband and she couldn't bring herself to Gatsby and Daisy drive back to Long island together from Manhattan and accidentally strike and kill Myrtle Wilson who is walking back home from heading towards the Plaza Hotel. Tom, Nick and Jordan meanwhile, discover the accident as they drive back subsequently. And it's Jordan's comments to Nick around protecting Daisy and Gatsby's anonymity that really takes him aback. And he says that he doesn't want to be engaged to her anymore and he doesn't even want to drive back with them because the two of them are monsters. I think he may even call her heartless for suggesting it. He says a woman has died tonight and she says that doesn't mean we need to ruin two other lives in the process. And I just don't think that this particular exchange in this book scene really gets us all the way there to understanding why he bites back at her so much, he rejects her so entirely in that moment and why that completely destroys his perception of her. When moments after he goes back to Gatsby's mansion to find Gatsby alone there and he tells Gatsby, they're going to trace your car, they're going to find you. You have to run, you have to go to Atlantic City, you have to go to Montreal. At this point he doesn't even know that it was Daisy who was driving the car. He thinks that Gatsby has driven too fast, struck and killed a woman, and he is still telling him that he needs to flee. But when Jordan suggested that they shouldn't give their name up to the police, that Was unimaginable. What a ridiculous and wild double standard this is. It makes no sense. And I think that has a lot to do with what they've done with the characters of Nick and Jordan in this production, which we will talk about a little later when we talk about performances. In the meantime, let's talk about the design, the direction, the choreography. Oh, but just before we do the act two, joke about the sound traveling over the sound. And the awkward pause while he says it. Hate it. Horrible. Kill it with fire. So on the design, the staging, the choreography, this, I think, is where the show really excels. It is stunning to look at. I love the set design, and it's absolutely like the most expensive version of the party store perception of what Art Deco, 1920s great Gatsby would be. The same with all of the flapper dresses and the outfits that they're wearing with all of the gold and black at the beginning. I'm pretty sure that they had identical versions of these outfits at Paper Mill. And they made them subtly different from each other when the show moved to Broadway, which was a really great choice and change. I like that. The chorus that we see here are, for the most part, party guests and these vapid personalities who are in Gatsby's orbit when he is successful and when he is serving all of the champagne, but who abandon him later on. I think that definitely tells the story that the show is trying to tell. In terms of the hedonism and in terms of the mood of the time. It doesn't really contend with the issues of the working class Americans and the American dream and some of the other bigger ideas invoked in the novel. But really that's sort of more the responsibility of George Wilson and Nick and Gatsby himself as characters. Now, Linda Cho is the costume designer for this production who won a Tony Award for these very costumes. And the sense of character and how it's conveyed is really brilliantly done. Both Tom Buchanan and Jay Gatsby are both stylishly attired, but there is such a difference in the effortless class with which Tom is dressed and the ostentatious clothes that Gatsby is wearing that seem not quite to suit him, which I think is a brilliant, purposeful choice. I'm also obsessed with all of the fabrics that they use for Daisy's costuming and the way that they attach a single draped bit of fabric to her wrist at the beginning. Everything that she wears seems to float. It gives her this angelic, magical quality as she moves across the stage. And she is Delicate and ethereal and dreamlike. She is this object of Gatsby's desire, really, and it looks perfect. Jordan, meanwhile, for the most part, until one moment in Act 2, does not wear dresses. She wears, like I said, stunning palazzo pants. I do want to say a quick thing about wigs, because the wig that they have for Jordan Baker in the West End, I don't think it's really a bob. It's sort of just like all. It's a similar length all around. We don't have that little, like, higher in the back thing going on. And the bob that they do have for Samantha Pauly on Broadway falls heavy on one side of her head and is behind her ear on the other side. And for baffling reasons, they just stage her so that so often she's talking through the side of her hair to the audience and it's just covering her face. And it's the easiest fix in the world to just style the wig the other way or have her be stood on the other side of Nick for so much of the show. The last time I saw it, I'm just getting bob. Myrtle, meanwhile, is dressed in these colours of passion, in pinks and reds and oranges. Even when she's wearing the more expensive dress that Tom buys her, it's still a little bit trashy. Again, it's the idea of, like, money can't buy you class. Money can't buy you class. Same thing with the blonde wig with the dark roots. There's a little bit of an artificial, special quality about her aesthetic. You know, there's the image that she is striving for that is not the class and the role that she was born into. The choreography by Dominique Kelly captures that same sort of idea that the score does of infusing it with the contemporary vibes. There are moments where we pay homage, like I said, to classic choreography. And towards the beginning, as this ensemble march on and reveal themselves and hit a line at the front, there's something very classic about the silhouettes and the ways in which they pose. But regardless, it is thrillingly satisfying choreography throughout. It is dynamic, it is energized. It's great to watch. Now, the scenic and projection design is credited to Paul Tate DePoo III. Like I said, looks like a million bucks or a million pounds indeed, on stage. What I think is so great about the Great Gatsby design, in terms of the set, is the way in which the projections and the way in which video screens are married to the real elements of staging and the real set pieces Achieving a very convincing blend between the two. Yes, we have video screens, but no, we aren't reliant on those video screens. And it enables the show to move completely between the Valley of Ashes and create this desolate landscape with the big billboard with the glasses and then the various lavish homes of Gatsby and the Buchanans. Corey Patek's lighting design also plays a big part in this as well. All of this overseen by director Mark Bruni, who stages the thing with emotion and with passion. And they're driving these cars across the stage. And at the end of New Money, there are pyrotechnics and there are fireworks happening, literally and figuratively. It is thrilling to look at. It is also clear and characterful storytelling, which makes the narrative hugely accessible here, not only for perhaps non English speaking tourists, like I mentioned before, but also schools groups. The last time that I saw this on Broadway, it was spring break, it was a Thursday matinee and there were a bunch of school kids around us who were all going wild for all the romantic revelations. Every time that someone broke up with someone else, every time that there was a kiss, every time that an affair was mentioned, they were scandalized, but they were living for it. And that was exciting to be a part of. Like I said, not the most sophisticated version of the Great Gatsby, but one that is appealing to a lot of people nonetheless. And it's in these design details and it's in the direction that the show is perpetrating. What I like to call a theatrical Vulcan mind trick, or for a more overtly musical theatre reference. They are razzle, dazzling you, they are throwing so much at you, so much spectac. These great vocals, these huge songs that it's making you think. This is an amazing show and there's a huge amount of entertainment value in the show. There's just a lot of nuance and depth that isn't really being delivered. One quick thing about direction, just because it's always bothered me, when they did the show at Paper Mill, Gatsby sang the first few opening lines, which I think everyone agreed wasn't really the best choice because, you know, gone was his mystery and his intrigue. He should not be the first character that we are meeting here. In the new version version, you see him and then a set piece moves across him and then magically it's Nick. They do quite well with a lot of these, like, magical split second reveals. Myrtle has a costume change that also has a decent wow factor. But in that Paper Mill production, Gatsby Then drove on the car that arrived in the middle of the party to meet Nick, which I thought, God, if they could just do that instead of the first bit, that would be the best entrance that any character has perhaps ever had in a musical. And then they moved to New York and they cut both of them. So now we exit out of new money. This huge, huge applause, crazy pyrotechnic end of this company number, kind of the most exciting number that we have seen so far. Lights up in Gatsby's office and he's just stood there and it's now a very strange anti climax. For his reveal as a character, he deserves a much more mysterious introduction a la the Phantom of the Opera. We know how to do intrigue with these mysterious men who are controlling all of these circumstances because of the young women that they want to marry. Actually, a lot of parallels between those two. In any case, I've said enough about direction and design. Let's move on and talk about these performances. Now, as a fun little footnote, before I talk about any specific characters or actors, there is a phenomenon on Broadway where performers get entrance applause not exclusive to huge star names. Often it happens for all the major characters in any show. This does not really happen in the West End, really ever. And what you notice when you see this show in London is that it's been built for these entrance applause moments. Nick has a substantial pause after he is first revealed. Gatsby doesn't bafflingly. And Daisy has a moment as well where she's reading a newspaper for a long time and then she puts it down like she's Holland Taylor at the end of Legally Blonde, spinning around in a salon chair. And again, a little bit of a pause. But London people aren't clapping. Let's talk about these performances, though, because there's an awful lot to say. Jamie Moscato, I think, might have been my favourite Gatsby, if only because he reads a little younger on stage. And I haven't seen Ryan McCarten. I've only seen Jeremy Jordan as well as one of the actors who is currently covering the role in New York. But Jamie Reid's a little younger and didn't feel natural in that setting wearing those outfits. He looked like a young boy wearing clothes that didn't fit him. And that's really exactly who Gatsby is. I think there's a danger in allowing him to feel a little too suave, a little too comfortable and a little too sophisticated when all of this is a pretense. And for A show that portrays this story with a minimal amount of depth. I think he probably ought to be characterized with a similar lack of depth on that front. If you make his. His contrived identity a little too nuanced, I fear we might just miss it alongside all of the more obvious stuff that's happening. And I don't love the moments in which the character is reduced to silliness, when his anxious anticipation of his reunion with Daisy drives him to saying I am not okay and leaping over the fence and getting laughs by being silly and ridiculous. And the whole today's the day of it all. And that played very well into the goofy Jeremy Jordan Jordan comedy. But what Jamie Moscato does really well and has always done really well in shows like Moulin Rouge and really a lot of the other stuff that he's done on stage, Heather's as well, is he really captures that passionate young outsider quality. I mean, Gatsby is very Romeo from Romeo and Juliet, really. Nick, meanwhile, I think is a deceptively difficult character to characterize well. And after all, he is our protagonist. And they borrow a lot of lines from the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel for Nick Nick in his introduction and in his conclusion. The way that. I don't know if it's been directed this way, but in the introductory moments, particularly as Corbin Blue delivered them when I saw the show recently in London, he has such a beaming smile across his face and he's playing it for laughs that when he's saying like after everything that's happened and like he realizes that people are terrible and it gets a laugh. But we later come to realize retroactively that this moment ought to be tinged with a great deal more melancholy, really. This isn't a moment for Nick to be smart, smiling. And that I think is where the character goes a little bit awry, particularly in Corbin's performance. How I have enjoyed him before, hugely. In Little Shop of Horrors, I thought he was brilliant, but he's also a very charismatic leading man type. I think fundamentally Corbin Blue is not really a Nick Carraway. He's a Jay Gatsby who can't necessarily sing the very highest notes of the score, for what it's worth. Also, the show has been consistently diverse in its casting. I would like to see a non white Gatsby because I think he is so othered and he is so positioned as an outsider by Tom. There's all this rhetoric around, like you'll never be acceptable to the likes of Daisy's father and to society. It's not about how much money you have. It's about class. That's a really important line in the second act. And I just think that there are more layers on which that would resonate if there was a non white actor playing Gatsby. Nick, ultimately, I think, is a little divorced from his ongoing sense of curiosity and intrigue that he is usually associated with. And he's sort of just taken aback and shocked and flummoxed the entire time or falling in love with Jordan, and he's too busy with that nonsense of a relationship subplot to be paying real attention to what's going on. And he stops being an effective narrator about 20 minutes into the show, and he's just too busy being like gorsh all the time. And Noah Ricketts has been my favorite in that role because I think he really landed the despair at the end very meaningfully, which is, you know, where we really need to get to and where the story is finally empowered to say something. But with Corbin and Jamie, I don't think that, age wise, they read in the right way for Corbin to, at any point in the show, feel like he was Mr. Gatsby's young apprentice to his way of seeing the world. And there are a lot of other very interesting differences between the way that the show has historically been cast in New York and the way that it's recently been cast in London. John Robbins is a very different type as Tom Buchanan. He feels more like the smarmy private school type. He reads quite a bit older than Nick and Jay and Daisy, and he doesn't feel like this arrogant, macho college football star quite as much as he does with the casting on Broadway. But let's talk about the women here. Now, the role of Daisy was originally played by Eva Nobozada, subsequently by Sarah Hyland, on Broadway, now in London by Frances Maily McCann. Each of them adopt slightly different degrees, degrees of duplicitousness and nicety in terms of the way that they present Daisy. A woman who knows that her husband is having an affair but won't admit to it in polite company and who participates in the charade of their marriage because that's what she needs to do to fit in with society. A woman who won't even dare to play golf with her close friend in her own home until encouraged to do so. Because what would people say? And I think while you could play Daisy to simply be this tragic victim, and while the book does sort of paint her that way as well, with the way that she's been written by Kate Kerrigan. There's a little more honesty in facing up to her knowingness and the small choices that she does make for herself. Sarah Hyland gave I think my favorite Daisy acting performance still is giving my favorite Daisy acting performance over on Broadway, because there is such an artificial quality to the way that she greets Nick at the beginning. And then we see the mask slip a little bit more when she. She says, nick, everything is awful. Everyone thinks so when she's trying to let him know about her circumstances, but even then she's not really articulating it. But there is such a facade that she's maintaining. Frances and Eva, I think, pitch that characterization fairly similarly, although Francis feels like the version of Eva after Chicago, and Eva still feels a little bit too naive, like she hasn't really grown into the Daisy that she would be after those circumstances. And the vocals that Frances delivers specifically with Beautiful Little fool towards the end of the second act, this big 11 o'clock number in which Daisy conveys to Nick that, you know, she doesn't have a great many choices in this world as a young woman and she recognizes that fate for her young daughter, baby Pammy. Also, I do think it's a little bit of a curious decision to move that conversation there. Beautiful Little fool is something. It's a comment that Daisy makes about her hopes for her daughter and her future right towards the beginning of Fitzgerald's novel. So to put it at the end, to just give Daisy this out about the choices that she made about kind of abandoning Gatsby, not going to his funeral, it's a song worth writing. It's a conversation worth having. It's an important aspect of the conversation. But we never really get into her acknowledging what happened and the tragedy of his circumstances. And ultimately, I do think, even though I've heard Kate Kerrigan speak about wanting to empower these female characters, characters more and give them agency that, you know, aside from the limitations of the narrative and their roles in society, they still remain romantic objects for the most part. Myrtle Wilson is a hugely interesting tragic character because she deals with all of the same challenges that Daisy does, but with none of the privilege and the protections of class. And I think a version in which spoiler alert here, once again, she's sees the oncoming yellow car driven by Daisy and Gatsby as this symbol of hope and escape for her, the same way that Gatsby saw that in the green light across the bay and throws herself towards it in desperation. I think that is much more powerful than her deciding to go back home after starting out on a walk towards the Plaza Hotel from Queens and being accidentally struck by the car instead. I also think Rachel Tucker's performance is so different to the one that Lynet is currently giving on Broadway that Sarah Chase gave when I first saw the show. Because Rachel feels a little older as Myrtle and a significant amount wiser, fascinatingly. And I do enjoy this a lot, actually. She really plays care for George like she does still care about him, and she doesn't want to hear him mocked. But also when he confronts her about pregnancy and an affair and she appeals to him, you can feel a lot more genuine affection between the two of them in that moment. But the thing is, Rachel's Myrtle feels perhaps a little bit too wise because she seems canny to the way that the world works when she's in the car with Nick and with Tom. And she says, this is the way that it is. You have to have your wife at home, your girl in the city. So for her to then have the revelation halfway through the song about the Plaza Hotel later on when she realizes that the life that she's seeking for herself would become a miserable one because he would just have an affair with someone else even if they were to get married married, that feels like something that she'd have already thought about. I think John Robbins as Tom actually has a similar issue with arc and trajectory because we don't necessarily feel he's so slimy and he's so easy to resent, which works. But you don't feel the genuine connection between him and Myrtle. You don't feel that he actually cares for her and in a way, is enduring his own romantic tragedy because he can't be with the person who he wants to be with either. And so there's few scenes that he plays at the end of the. The show just feel manipulative and villainous. They don't feel motivated by heartbreak. We also have George Wilson. Joel Montague is currently playing this role in London. He is labored with some of the show's most boring musical material. I'm sorry to say. When he sings to the billboard with the glasses and is like, good morning, Duck. It's a boring song. There's really nothing that you can do about that. But I think more than that, what's a little lacking in terms of his version of the character is he is sort of pathetic and optimistic in a way that makes sense for George, but he lacks, I think, that capacity for menace that makes him this important figure for the final Few scenes. A final spoiler alert here because there's a little bit of a difference in the way that a pivotal scene right at the end of the musical is staged. I'm talking about the moment that George Wilson seeks out Gatsby in his home and shoots him with Gatsby falling dead into the pool. And this moment in the way that it's staged has had a little bit of social media quit criticism recently because the actor playing Gatsby has like put out a pillow by the side of the pool, which is at the front of the stage. He gets shot, he falls to his knees on the pillow and then he tumbles sideways off of the stage into the orchestra pit. It's a shock inducing moment. And sometimes at some performances people laugh. And I'm sure that this has been happening since the beginning of the show's life. But actor Ryan McCarten was a little taken aback by it. And there was a whole moment in terms of how he responded to it. It does seem to be, at least at the performance I was at in New York, young people that are laughing at this because it's shocking that that's just happened the way they do it in London, perhaps in response to this. Who can possibly say is they now have him getting shot and sort of placing blood on his own chest upstage so that he turns around, reveals blood on his chest and then just tumbles without falling to his knees first into the orchestra pit. Which is still just as shocking. But what I really love about about it is that it leaves some blood splattered on the front of the stage. And when you have all of these characters coming back on in their glitzy 1920s flapper dresses and party outfits and they're doing roaring on at the end, even if the final lines of Nick Carraway fail to deliver the weight that they are supposed to, the weight that they do in Fitzgerald's novel, the image of blood still on the stage is a delicious little contrast there. And I wish the whole show could, could be as gritty, as bloody and, you know, as sharply focused on the contradiction between these two ideas, between these romantic dreams and the harsh reality of the time. Finally, then, let's talk about the character who is perhaps the most failed by this narrative, who is Jordan Baker. And she arrives so well characterized and making such good points about why she doesn't want to get married, why she doesn't believe in marriage, why it's a great proposition for men that comes with many tangible disadvantages for women economically and socially. And yet for Some reason, her being able to propose to Nick on her own terms changes all of that for her, even though it doesn't change any of it, really. They haven't changed society. And there's nothing about Nick's character other than, you know, being a nice, charming, poor boy that suggests to her that this is going to be any different from the other marriages that she's witnessed. This is why eventually she decides that, after all, it isn't something that she wants to do. But she doesn't even really get to make that decision. She just hints at regret about it. And then Nick breaks things off with her. And I think the problem here goes along with this idea of trying to make the show feel contemporary. And I can only assume that the writers discussed what Jordan's character ought to feel like in this kind of contemporary sensibility. And the idea they reached is just the wrong wave of feminism. She's just left landed in The Girl Boss 6 Queen, Spice Girl era of feminism. She's a third wave feminist. And that's not the Jordan Baker of the novel. The Jordan Baker of the novel is a couple of waves back in first wave feminism. And I just don't think that she's characterized very meaningfully in this version of the show. I also think, for what it's worth, just like Corbin Bleu would actually be a slightly better Gatsby, I think Amber Davis, currently playing the role in London, would really be a Daisy more so than a Jordan AM. And I think the fact that they have cast Myrtle in three completely different ways every time I've seen the show is indicative of the fact they don't really know who her character is. And I think the same thing with Jordan, like they're casting performers who can dance it and who can sing it and who can give these sassy line readings and who are shorter than the Nick. They're playing opposite, even in heels. And Amber sounds fantastic with the whistle tone moments that she's putting in to new money. But I'm just not getting Jordan Baker characters, characterization. And like I said, there are shortcomings in terms of this as an adaptation of the Great Gatsby. Is it the most meaningful? Is it the most emotionally impactful? Is it the most thought provoking musical that you're going to see on stage? No to any of those things. It is, however, legitimately entertaining. It is, like I said, easy to recommend to people. It is offering you all of that showbiz pizzazz. It has a wow factor. It looks great, passionate, big performances, outstanding vocals across the board bored. It sounds fantastic. And because I've heard from so many people that they really loved this show, it feels very important that you go and make up your mind for yourself. Go and check out the Great Gatsby and then decide how you feel about it and then come right back here and let us know what you thought in the comments section down below. If you've already seen the show, then share with all of us. What do you think of the Great Gatsby? Thank you so much for listening to this review. It's been a very long time coming and I hope that you have enjoyed if you did, make sure to subscribe to my theatre themed YouTube channel with the notifications turned on. So YouTube lets you know every time I share a new video or if it's easier, go and follow me on podcast platforms. I hope that everyone is staying safe and that you have a stagey day old sport. For 10 more seconds, I'm Mickey Jo Theatre. Oh my God. 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