Theatre in Review: The Great Gatsby (Broadway Theatre)

	Noah J. Ricketts, Samantha Pauly, and company. Photo: Matthew Murphy and Evan Zimmerman

For those who feel an affection for F. Scott Fitzgerald's novel, this is not the attraction for you. If you pass by the Broadway Theatre, keep moving; nothing to see here. Even for hardcore musical theatre fans, however, The Great Gatsby is a real puzzler, a show that can't make up its mind about what it wants to be. It's hard to tell what its creators saw in this material; in a way, the problem is that they saw too many things.

This is still the story of Gatsby, the enigmatic millionaire holed up in his Long Island palace, and his obsession with the Louisville belle Daisy, now unhappily married to Tom Buchanan, a sociopathic scion of old money. As related by Nick Carraway, Daisy's diffident, drifting cousin, it's a triangle eminently primed for tragedy. Gone, however, are Fitzgerald's subtle insights; in trying to convert The Great Gatsby into a glossy melodrama driven by power ballads, book writer Kait Kerrigan, composer Jason Howland, and lyricist Nathan Tysen change up their approach in virtually every scene.

The lights come up on a chorus line of decadent Manhattan partiers striking angular poses like Sweet Charity's Fandango Ballroom girls, then slinking downstage à la Bob Fosse. This opening number, "Roaring On," a rush of Cy Coleman-style Broadway pizzazz, is followed in short order by "New Money," another frantic high stepper, featuring the guests at one of Gatsby's bashes. For all we know, we're in for an evening of jazz hands and trumpet blasts; there's more where that came from in Act II with "La Dee Dah with You," in which Nick leads a gang of male dancers dressed as doughboys through a hot-cha tap routine. At times like these, you'd never know The Great Gatsby is a study of shattered dreams and ruined lives; these people have songs to sell.

Cognitive dissonance is introduced along with the star-crossed lovers, who strike a different, sadder note: Gatsby gets "For Her," which, if nothing else, shows off Jeremy Jordan's pristine, powerful vocals. Daisy has "Absolute Rose," which hints, delicately, at the details of her unhappy marriage. Suddenly, the show is leaning in the direction of doomed romance. Then comedy awkwardly inserts itself: A Harlem house party with Tom and Myrtle, his blowsy mistress, turns into a borderline orgy, with a couple of leering gay guys trying to feel up Nick. Later, when Nick arranges a discreet tea-party meeting for Gatsby and Daisy, the action turns farcical, featuring an army of servants rushing about, planning a Lucullan feast, and Gatsby, fearful of meeting Daisy again, hiding his face behind a potted plant.

What kind of musical is this? Better to ask, how many musicals are playing on the Broadway Theatre stage? Adding to the confusion are some strange storytelling choices. Gatsby has been stripped of his backstory, including his poor, emotionally deprived upbringing; his relentless self-improvement habits; and his apprenticeship under the alcoholic millionaire Dan Cody. It's hard to believe that Eva Noblezada's enervated Daisy was once a practiced charmer with a line of beaux stretching around the block. The show nervously skirts her empty, shallow nature; late in the evening, trying to explain her actions -- which, you know, include manslaughter -- she delivers "Beautiful Little Fool," reframing herself as a victim of women's limited choices in the 1920s. It's the least convincing defense since Roxie Hart claimed they both reached for the gun.

In the book, Nick and Jordan Baker, the cynical sportswoman who becomes his summer fling, are largely cast as observers, so Kerrigan and Tysen build them up, essentially converting them into the second-lead comic lovers featured in so many golden-age musicals. Jordan retains some of her bite and independence but, dressed in pantsuits and a very Barbra Streisand hairdo, Samantha Pauly seems to have traveled in the wayback machine from the 1960s. Not that period fidelity is a concern: An aggrieved hostess tells Nick, "My sister Myrtle said you were a 10. You're a four." Gatsby, recalling how the war traumatized him, says a doctor advised him "to journal." (Was he seeing Dr. Phil?) Looking at the audience, Nick announces, "Tom's an asshole."

Marc Bruni's direction is efficient at moving actors, dancers, and scenery, less so at sustaining a consistent, coherent tone; Dominique Kelley's choreography is energetic, if often derivative and overly insistent on delivering showstoppers. Jordan, deploying a lockjawed New England accent that makes him sound like a lost Kennedy brother, and Noblezada, forever in repose yet nervously clutching her handkerchief, struggle to spark some mutual chemistry. Noah J. Ricketts (who plays Nick) and Pauly make a much livelier pair, but they belong in another, less-conflicted musical. Sara Chase and Paul Whitty are suitably lost as the grasping Myrtle and George, her grease-monkey spouse, both of whom end up as collateral damage. As Meyer Wolfsheim, Gatsby's underworld associate, Eric Anderson delivers the silly, disposable "Shady," accompanied by sinister dancers in trench coats and fedoras. The most authentic portrait is John Zdrojeski's brutish, sentimental, possessive Tom; oddly, he is the only principal not to get a solo.

The Great Gatsby is the third show designed this season by the new face Paul Tate dePoo III and here, as in Spamalot last fall, he combines scenery and projections in a way that often makes them impossible to tell apart. Some imagery -- for example, the lawn of the Buchanan estate -- has a startling sense of depth. If the overall design is, arguably, over-scaled -- the foyer of Gatsby's mansion looks like the lobby of Radio City Music Hall -- it certainly makes an impression. George Wilson's gas station, set in the industrial wasteland Fitzgerald calls "the valley of ashes," is eerily dominated by the famous faded billboard with its portrait of staring eyes. A tableau of Gatsby gazing at the green light at the end of the Buchanans' pier probably gets closer to his delirious, ill-advised yearnings than anything else in the show. Lighting designer Cory Pattak, who also collaborated with dePoo on Spamalot, polishes the numbers with notable skill. Brian Ronan's sound design achieves nearly ideal intelligibility. Linda Cho's costumes have their odd moments -- Gatsby's party guests are dressed like the cast of a Broadway revue -- but, for the most part, she styles the principals attractively and appropriately.

Whatever its unique excesses and wrong turns, this Gatsby has the same problem as almost every other adaptation: The novel is modernist in its construction, being told by Nick, who picks up fragments of the story from others. It's a tale spun out of rumors, myths, memories, and dreams that, in the light of day, take on a sordid cast. Telling it straightforwardly risks reducing it to pulp fiction. Treating it as a great love story is an almost impossible proposition. Like its hero, this Great Gatsby bets it all on entertainment, wooing the audience by any means necessary. It's a wager on which Lady Luck doesn't look too kindly. --David Barbour