‘Gatsby’ Review: A Smartly Stinging Musical Adaptation With Spectacle, Grit and Florence Welch Tunes
variety.comBob Verini For all its jaw-dropping spectacle, and the musical excitement of the tunes by Florence Welch (of Florence and the Machine) and Thomas Bartlett (a/k/a Doveman), the American Repertory Theater’s “Gatsby” never forgets that F.
Scott Fitzgerald’s magnum opus is a stinging rebuke of the American Dream. “The Great Gatsby” is obsessed with desire: It’s sickened of the embrace of false values, and the yearning for worldly things that leaves one empty and alone.
While many musicals kick off with an “I want” song in which we are alerted to the protagonist’s life goal, “Gatsby” is one big, ensemble “I want,” to which America keeps responding, “Baby, you ain’t gettin’ it.” Playwright Martyna Majok, our Pulitzer-winning (“Cost of Living”) bard of the underclass experience, is an ideal librettist for Fitzgerald’s social vision.
Most adaptations — including the entirely separate musical currently on Broadway — focus on the routine romantic triangle among the mysterious Gatsby (Isaac Powell), bigoted capitalist Tom Buchanan (Cory Jeacoma) and Daisy (Charlotte MacInnes), the one-time Louisville belle for whom they vie.
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