“The Great Gatsby” at the Coliseum
Franco Milazzo in the West End
25 April 2025
There have been various stage adaptations of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s epochal novel over the years, but in this Broadway musical (music Jason Howland, lyrics Nathan Tysen, book Kait Kerrigan) we have a Gatsby that deserves to be called great – if only as a spectacle.
Amber Davies and Frances Mayli McCann.
Photo credit: Johan Persson.
Set on Long Island, New York in the 1920s, the story revolves around Nick Carraway, his wealthy neighbour Jay Gatsby, and Carraway’s cousin Daisy who Jay fell in love with some years before but is now married to the boorish Tom Buchanan. It’s a tale of excess and greed, new money versus old money, and the blinding effect of love, lust, and ambition that, in director Marc Bruni’s playful hands, rolls this way and that before its tragic finale.
The laser focus here is on Jamie Muscato as the obsessed millionaire and Frances Mayli McCann as the paramour he pines over from across the bay. Their relationship, from Gatsby’s initially nervous demeanour to Daisy’s defiant march when she leaves him to his fate, is touchingly portrayed. Kait Kerrigan’s book puts these two heavily under the spotlight with the consequence that the other romance between Corbin Bleu’s Nick and amateur golfer Jordan (Love Island winner Amber Davies) feels almost incidental.
It’s mixed fortunes for the rest of the cast. Tom is sturdily played by Jon Robyns as an uncouth brute, irked every which way by Gatsby’s very existence in between carrying on an affair with the also-married Myrtle (Rachel Tucker). Her rendition of “One-Way Road” just before she is cruelly run over is the highlight of the evening, a cry to the heavens which goes from joyously celebrating her future as a rich man’s wife to fearing she may end up being eventually discarded (“I am guessing I’ll have two good years / Before another shiny thing appears”).
Joel Montague paints Myrtle’s husband George Wilson with pure pathos. A pitiful figure failed by the American Dream who passes the time by talking to an overheard billboard (“Good mornin’, Doc / How’s the view from up there?”) when not running a gas station. He’s also stashing illicit booze for Gatsby’s gangster associate Meyer Wolfsheim, an underwritten role on which the talents of John Owen-Jones are frankly wasted.
Husband and wife team Kerrigan and Tysen tell the story through songs, dialogue, and (often) a mixture of both. They work well to convey the basic plot but have chosen to both chop and expand the original narrative. Gatsby’s backstory is skimmed with few details of what happened after the war and his arrival in the affluent neighbourhood of West Egg, while we see a lot more of what goes on between Tom and Myrtle. Tysen’s lyrics are more functional than emotional and do the heavy lifting when it comes to rounding out the characters.
Paul Tate dePoo III’s opulent set design and video projections make optimum use of the West End’s biggest stage and it is hard not to feel immersed and impressed as we fluently swish at speed from one richly imagined scene to another. Gatsby’s parties are all-swinging, all-dancing affairs with a jazz band and a singer in a massive headdress at the back with a battery of virtual fireworks shooting off. Sports cars drive up and then take off; slowly receding background imagery gives the illusion that they are motoring towards the audience. A sleazy motel replete with swingers and cheaters practically reeks of sweat and sin so real is its depiction. Adding to the gorgeous ambience are Linda Cho’s sparkly period costumes that evoke wealth beyond words. The dancers saunter around the immense stage all in perfect precision to Dominique Kelley’s perky choreography beautifully illuminated by Cory Pattak’s lighting design.
This musical has been changed considerably since its 2023 debut in New Jersey’s Paper Mill Playhouse. The subsequent transfer to the Great White Way saw the songbook tightened up, especially in the first act where four of the original opening six numbers were ditched and a new one (“Absolute Rose”) was written. It still feels a bit bandy in places, but composer Howland (who won a Grammy in 2015 for his work on Beautiful: The Carole King Musical) brings a deeply dramatic swing to the melodies that never tip over into rank sentimentality. “My Green Light” (sung by Daisy and Jay as they fall for each other all over again) and the roof-raising all-company opener “Roaring On” are both excellent.
Like Jay Gatsby himself, this highly polished musical is an incredibly flashy production that has come out of practically nowhere. If it lacks something in terms of dramatic ballast, that just goes to underline the moral of Fitzgerald’s cautionary tale: no matter how hard you try, you can’t have everything.
