The Great Gatsby at The National Theatre
Brilliiant and dazzling!
The Great Gatsby is a novel written by F. Scott Fitzgerald in 1924. The book for the play was written by Kait Kerrigan, Music by Jason Howland, and Lyrics by Nathan Tysen. This production is superbly Directed by Marc Bruni. The choreography by Dominique Kelley is dazzling.
The novel was inspired by a youthful romance Fitzgerald had with socialite Ginevra King and the wild parties he attended on Long Island in 1922. He then moved to the French Riviera where he wrote the book.
The play takes place in the spring of 1922. Nick Carraway, is a Yale alumnus from the Midwest, and a World War I veteran. He travels to NYC to obtain employment as a bond salesman. He rents a bungalow in the Long Island village of West Egg, next door to a luxurious estate owned by Jay Gatsby, a multimillionaire, who hosts incredible parties without actually participating in any of them. Nick ends up meeting his distant cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and her husband Tom Buchanan, who live in a mansion across from Gatsby. At Daisy’s mansion Nick encounters Jordan Baker, an insolent flapper and golf champion, who is a childhood friend of Daisy's. Jordan confides to Nick that Tom keeps a mistress, and Nick confronts him about it at the Plaza Hotel.
Nick receives an invite to one of Gatsby’s party’s and meets Gatsby. They go to lunch and again through Jordan, Nick finds out Daisy was in love with Gatsby, but then reluctantly married Tom. Gatsby thinks he can win Daisy back. Then Tom discovers Daisy’s affair with Gatsby, and it all goes haywire from there.
The play provides a critical social history of Prohibition-era America during the Jazz Age. Fitzgerald uses many of the 1920s societal developments to tell his story, from simple details like petting in automobiles, to broader themes such as bootlegging, as the illicit source of Gatsby's fortune.
Fitzgerald conveys the hedonism of Jazz Age society by following a down-to-earth narrator as a spectator of the flashiest and most raucous era in American history. In Fitzgerald's eyes, the era represented a morally permissive time when Americans of all ages became disillusioned with prevailing social norms, and obsessed with pleasure-seeking. Fitzgerald himself had a certain ambivalence towards the Jazz Age, an era whose themes he would later regard as reflective of events in his own life.
This production is loud, lush, and great fun. Great music, great actors, great costumes, great scenery. The cast is uniformly fantastic, all with incredible voices. Jake David Smith as Jay Gatsby; Senzel Ahmady as Daisy; Joshua Grosso as Nick; Leanne Robinson as Jordan; Lila Coogan as Myrtle; Will Branner as Tom; Tally Sessions as George; Edward Staudenmayer as Meyer; are again all incredible, each owning the stage in turn. The ensemble dancers are wonderfully talented and give the show pizzaz with each number, and the tap dancing segment is amazing to watch.
This show would not be nearly as great without the incredible creative team. Orchestra conductor, Charlie Alterman; brilliant sets and projections design, Paul Tate DePoo III; Costume Design, each one better than the next, Linda Cho; Lighting Design, Cory Pattak; and every other person that worked on this show deserves kudos.
It all adds up to an incredibly fun night in the theater that should not be missed. The Great Gatsby will be at the National until May 24, 2026. Tickets are going fast so go online and order yours today.