Review: ‘The Great Gatsby’ musical comes off as 'Gatsby'-lite, with little attention to weightier themes

Think of “The Great Gatsby” as “Gatsby”-lite.

The 2024 musical based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1920s-era novel is an art deco, flapperific fever dream. Sadly, the five-star production values are wrapped around a barely two-star adaptation of the novel itself. Director Marc Bruni’s staging is a fizzy Champagne pyramid of a show where style overcomes substance.

That said, “The Great Gatsby” is inarguably entertaining. The cast is excellent, and Jason Howland’s score (lyrics by Nathan Tysen) is packed with belting ballads, delicate love duets and barn-burning all-ensemble extravaganzas that are effective if melodically generic.

Photo by Evan Zimmerman

But not even a killer cast can alter the fact that “Gatsby” turns “The Great Gatsby” into a love story above all else, glossing over many of the book’s thornier themes.

The 1925 novel is canonical for good reason. It was arguably one of the biggest critiques of capitalism in the U.S.A. since Upton Sinclair's stomach-churning “The Jungle.” Yes, Fitzgerald filled his book with fabulous parties. But along with the glitter, he wrote a bone-bleak commentary on the American Dream, or, more accurately, the American Nightmare.

In Gatsby’s world, millionaires get rich breaking laws at the expense of those struggling with intractable poverty. Fitzgerald also warned of the poisonous influence of nationalism, Xenophobia and white supremacy — elements muted in this musical version.

The story unfolds during the summer of 1922, when Great War veteran Nick Carraway (Joshua Grosso) rents a cottage on Long Island, just across the bay from the mysterious Jay Gatsby (Jake David Smith). Hundreds revel at Gatsby’s mansion, but few ever see the host. Or at least not until Gatsby reaches out to Nick for a favor that sets tragedy in motion.

The other key players here are Daisy Buchanan (Senzel Ahmady) and her husband, Tom Buchanan (Will Branner), a violent misogynist whose derision of the nouveau riche is rivaled only by his derision of the poor. There’s also acerbic golfer Jordan Baker (Leeanne Robinson), Daisy’s marriage-averse, clear-eyed friend.

Photo by Evan Zimmerman

Their luxe world is contrasted by the grim, dun-colored industrial wasteland of the “Valley of Ashes,” where gas station owner George Wilson (Tally Sessions) scrimps and saves in hopes of a better day that will never come. His wife Myrtle (Lila Coogan), meanwhile, is plotting her own escape from poverty via the only means at her disposal: romancing a rich man.

The cast is superb, but the star is primarily Paul Tate DePoo III’s intricate sets and projections as well as Cory Pattak’s light design. The stage is framed with towering Art Deco-inspired arches. The shimmering waters of the bay, the jaw-dropping opulence of Gatsby’s mansion and grounds, the dust of the Valley of Ashes, the crumbling ophthalmologist billboard filled with an unsettling pair of all-seeing eyes, the Harlem apartment where an orgy breaks out and bones get broken — all are rendered in gorgeous, cinematic detail.

In the title role, Smith is smooth as a milkshake in an oil slick as he pulls Nick into his orbit of privilege and recklessness. He’s got pipes and presence, but he’s missing the inscrutable air of mystery that defines Jay Gatsby. Here, Gatsby’s an open book.

Photo by Evan Zimmerman

As Nick, Grosso’s journey from idealism to disillusionment is the musical’s through line. His gift for physical comedy surfaces with “The Met,” when Nick winds up at an orgy instead of the famed museum. Ahmady’s Daisy captures the brittle, bubbly affect of a young mother who is both miserable and used to getting everything she wants.

Branner is appropriately loathsome as Tom, although Kait Kerrigan’s book waters Tom down into a cartoon. Jordan Baker also loses something between page and stage. Robinson’s sardonic, gimlet eyed performance take-down of marriage is fierce, but the book’s sapphic coding of Jordan is all but erased.

Dominique Kelley’s choreography is resplendent. “Roaring On” channels the frenzied joy of the Charleston before morphing into something angular and subtly ominous. “La Dee Dah With You” (featuring the seismic vocals of Joann Gilliam as chanteuse Gilda Gray) includes a tap sequence from ensemble members Tyler Johnson-Campion and Josiah Hicks that evokes the great Nicholas Brothers. In “Shady,” Kelley deploys flowing black trenchcoats (vivid costumes throughout by Linda Cho) to create a bat-like backdrop in bootleg gangster Meyer Wolfsheim’s (Edward Staudenmayer) ode to criminality.

Over the past century, “The Great Gatsby” has been adapted in at least four musicals, three movies and too many dramas to keep track of. There’s plenty of reasons why the book has been part of pop culture for 100 years. Some of them are brought to life in “The Great Gatsby.” Many of them are not.