The Great Gatsby review

Some things are best left unsaid: F Scott Fitzgerald, like all great novelists, knew that. His enduring classic of American literature is told from a single perspective and the reader only ever learns what its narrator, Nick Carraway, knows – or better yet, what he chooses to reveal. Fitzgerald creates a milieu heavy on metaphor and suggestion, never giving away too much about Jay Gatsby until it’s too late.

Book writer Kait Kerrigan, composer Jason Howland and lyricist Nathan Tysen, the creators of this new Broadway musical adaptation of the novel, feel differently. This perfectly passable take on Fitzgerald’s masterpiece says all the quiet parts out loud. In a production by Marc Bruni, it insists on explaining every moment, sometimes repeatedly. If the goal is to make an already accessible work even more straightforward, they have done it.

Kerrigan takes a big red marker to Fitzgerald’s judicious pen. Here, Gatsby is calculating: he lures Nick out to Long Island, knowing Nick is his lost love Daisy’s cousin. Kerrigan also makes Gatsby Nick’s landlord, luring him in with the promise of cheap rent. The ineffectual pseudo-romance between Nick and golfer Jordan Baker becomes a full-fledged relationship, complete with engagement and suggested consummation. The gangster Meyer Wolfsheim, who lurks on the edges of Fitzgerald’s book, is transformed into the musical’s villain, threatening Gatsby and revealing his secrets to Daisy’s husband, Tom. 

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