There’s a big, splashy party over at the Hobby Center. Can’t you hear it? The sound of opulence could make you deaf.
Jay Gatsby’s in town this early spring in the new musical The Great Gatsby, and you know what that means – flappers, caviar, oysters, champagne, a private orchestra, lavish rooms bedecked in extravagant floral arrangements, light sconces big as the Hindenburg, women in silver-mesh cloche hats, men wearing double-breasted bespoke suits, grand marble balustrades, and a swimming pool sparkling in the sunset off Long Island Sound. It’s quite a palace and quite a show.
The only thing missing from all this Byzantine splendor is the guest of honor, F. Scott Fitzgerald, whose classic American novel (1925), often acclaimed by the literati as the “best book of the 20th century,” is the basis for this musical (2023) still playing on Broadway.
With book by Kait Kerrigan, music by Jason Howland, and lyrics by Bathan Nysen, this trio has transposed Fitzgerald’s slender book with its big ideas about class, race, power, noblesse oblige, its undercurrent misty promise of the American Dream into standard romantic comedy fare without probing the deeper themes that swirl throughout and make the book so universal. There are dialogue passages and lyrics that echo Fitzgerald’s luminous prose and psychological insights, but they get swallowed up inside this gargantuan production.
Paul Tate dePoo III’s lavish designs and projections with moving cloudscapes and smoking factory chimneys are impressive to say the least, but they dwarf the drama and overwhelm the characters, turning everything into soap. Gatsby’s palatial estate is heavy and commanding, mimicking the ornate bronze doors of Manhattan’s classic Woolworth Building with its nascent Art Deco geometric grillwork.
As Balanchine said, you cannot dance “grandmother,” so neither can you mush up Nick’s interior monologues into a catchy song lyric or a quick muddled line about motive. All the book’s deft personal observations, which are its wonders, are excised or squeezed into a staid formula. Fitzgerald’s ironic wit and charm and devilish probing perceptions are drop-kicked into the wings. And we are left with another basic musical about failed marriage, infidelity, and a doomed rekindling of a love affair from the past. All the richness has been mined out of it. Even the ending where Nick reminisces about “hope” and the ghostly vain attempt to go back into the past is drowned out by those incessant flappers and their beaus gyrating by the funeral bier. Fitzgerald’s class has been scuffed and made ragged.
Grammy and Emmy award-winner and Tony nominee, composer/arranger Howland has written a bountiful score, but it all sounds the same. Any one of the songs could be offered on The Voice or America’s Got Talent. The number rises in pitch and intensity until the singers wail far above the staff. The lights merge into a searing pin-spot on the final note as the orchestra reaches its crescendo – blackout. The prior number ended this way, too. And, you know what, the next one will, too.
What’s unique about this show is the seamless blending of dialogue and music within a scene. Someone speaks, the music begins or is already underscored, then the character sings a verse or two while the scene continues. It’s an amazingly fluid technique. The plot flows effortlessly between words and music.
Everybody sings exceptionally well, but when every number follows the same pattern, the music wears out its welcome in a hurry. If you enjoy these over-the-top performances – and every character has a big bang emotional wallop of a song – then Gatsby’s soundtrack will be your catnip. The softer ballads work best, but even Gatsby’s poignant “For Her” and “My Green Light,” a duet with Daisy, succumbs to the wham/bam finale. Sometimes quiet and gentle will set the scene and still knock us off-balance. This show will have none of that.
Except for a few noodlings in the orchestration, there’s not much whiff of the Roarin’ 20s to the sound. These are numbers for Katy Perry to stomp through on AutoTune, not Al Jolson. Dominique Kelley’s choreography is rambunctious, but looks suspiciously more like late ‘30s swing than the Charleston. Linda Cho’s Tony-winning costumes are a riot of bugle beads and sequins, wispy silk day dresses with handkerchief hems, and tailored coats and cap-toe shoes for the men. All period perfect.
The cast in this U.S. touring production is ultra-good, all veterans of the recent Korean production. They can belt like superstars and tap crisply along with the chorus dancers, but except for Joshua Grosso’s innocent bystander Nick, who narrates the story, they don’t mesh so well together. Jake David Smith’s Gatsby seems too young for the phenomenally successful and unknowable Gatsby; Senzel Ahmady seems too old for “beautiful little fool” Daisy, his former love; Will Branner’s Tom, Daisy’s toxic husband, never stops shouting; Lila Coogin’s Myrtle, Tom’s mistress from the other side of the tracks, never stops whining; Edward Staudenmeyer’s shady gangster Wolfheim growls menacingly; and Leanne Robinson’s butch amateur golfer Jordan sashays like Eve Arden, dropping sass and boredom among the “new money.”
Grosso’s Nick is the only one who catches that particular Fitzgerald mood. As he’s seduced by the hydroplane and polo ponies (not shown here, but the yellow Rolls Royce and the blue coupe make welcome appearances), he realizes the futility of these “careless people” who “smashed up things…then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness…and let other people clean up the mess they had made.” Ah, all those debauched, amoral denizens of East and West Egg. If only they were on stage. Where did they go?
The Great Gatsby continues through March 8 at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday; 2 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday; and 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. Sunday at the Hobby Center for the Performing Arts, 800 Bagby. For more information, call 713-315-2525 or visit thehobbycenter.org. $47.97 – $302.