The revealing thing about Sarah Brigham’s production of the F Scott Fitzgerald classic is the way it keeps erupting into dance. Any time things threaten to get serious in this new adaptation by Elizabeth Newman, the band strikes up, the silvery frocks come out and the stage is alive with the charleston and foxtrot.
The young dandies and flappers do not know the identity of Jay Gatsby, their wealthy host – in their snobby way, they suspect him of being an arriviste, perhaps a bootlegger, certainly not old money – but they are helpless in the face of so much glamour, celebrity and hedonism. No scene goes by without another sultry jazz standard played by a band disguised in glasses and gaberdines and perched high on Jen McGinley’s art deco set, with its twin staircases and marbled floor.
Even the punctilious narrator, Nick Carraway (a commanding David Rankine), is swept up in the interwar fun. With his neat brown suit and polite demeanour, he looks more like a bond trader than the writer he wants to be, but still he cannot resist the allure of Gatsby’s extravagant parties.
Oraine Johnson’s Gatsby is no mean hoofer himself. When it comes to the dance routines, the supposedly enigmatic host leads from the front. This adds much to the energy, but it also fuels an interpretation of Gatsby that pulls in two directions.
This Gatsby is never as unknowable as everyone claims. Where he could be inscrutable he is emotionally available, willing to play low status where you expect him to be aloof. His repeated phrase “old sport” comes across as a conversational quirk where it should be a sign of a man mirroring the class he aspires to. It makes it hard to see what his snooty guests know instinctively: that he has attempted to buy his way into their affections – in particular those of Daisy Buchanan (a warm-hearted Fiona Wood) – but he can never be one of them.
As Gatsby’s sad story unravels, the tone grows darker and the frivolity abates. But although the production does well to capture the hangover following the jazz age party, it underplays the tragedy of a man whose fatal flaw is to believe in a meritocratic US.
