The Great Gatsby, Citadel Theatre/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre/ Grand Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Citadel is throwing a bash, a veritable explosion of sequins, feathered headdresses, sparkly fringes, champagne cocktails — and an onstage band that plays “Let’s misbehave!” like they mean it.

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As Nick Carraway, our wry, appealingly confidential man onstage, tells us at the outset as he introduces The Great Gatsby, “I knew you’d come to the party.” Exactly. Put on your party pumps, people, and head downtown.

The so-called American Dream, in tatters of late, has made a bit of a comeback this week south of the border. And here’s a show, Erin Shields’ new stage adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s beautiful Jazz Age novel, that invites us to assess that discredited Dream in a different, more intricate way. And there’s something intriguingly contradictory, to be sure, in the theatrical pizzaz on display. Daryl Cloran’s lavish, elegant production addresses the emptiness of conspicuous ‘20s extravagance; it has its cake and eats it too.

But The Great Gatsby is more than that. The haunting and tragic Fitzgerald masterwork has found its way before now, from the page into plays, musicals, an opera or two, films, TV series, mostly with mixed success. You can see what makes the story irresistible: at the centre of a cluster of vivid characters, in an opulent, vintage setting in the New York of the ‘20s, is a figure of wealth and mystery. Jay Gatsby (Duncan Cox) is a man of shadowy provenance, in love with an elusive, long-lost woman, Daisy Buchanan (Tess Benger). His dream is nothing less than taking charge of time, re-setting the clock, reuniting with Daisy, now married to someone else.

“Of course you can repeat the past!” he declares to his skeptical neighbour Nick Carraway (Richard Lee Hsi), the new friend he’s hitting up to assist him in this quest. For five years Gatsby has set about realizing his dream, getting rich, reinventing himself as an eastern seaboard millionaire with blue-blood cred. Why? It’s Daisy’s natural habitat. He’s filled his extraordinary mansion with “interesting” and eccentric people; he throws glittering all-night parties, all with the secret agenda of attracting her. And Cox’s performance captures the combination of suavity, sophistication, and moments of terror that bring Gatsby to life as someone who realizes he’s standing on the edge of a precipice, and there’s no guard rail.  

Richard Lee Hsi, Bailey Chin, Timothy Dowler-Coltman in The Great Gatsby, Citadel/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre/ Grand Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

But what makes the novel so remarkable and such a challenge for theatre adaptation, is that the storytelling is in the hands of a narrator, and narration is notoriously hard to pull off onstage. Nick Carraway is both one of ‘them’ (the characters) and one of ‘us’. He’s inside the story and a watchful observer of it, along with us. We watch the watch-er; we see an exotic, decadent, corrupt world through Nick’s eyes. He’s a sort of moral standard from which deviations are measured. All this by way of introduction to a terrific, perfectly judged performance by Lee Hsi in the complex assignment as Nick. It’s a role made for him, and it’s not an exaggeration to say that he makes the adaptation, and the evening, tick.

His verbal assessments of Gatsby, so exquisitely set forth by Fitzgerald, have more emotional heft and heart in Lee Hsi’s thoughtful performance, than the unfolding drama itself. It’s Gatsby’s “creative passion” and his “extraordinary gift for hope” that Nick most admire, in retrospect. “He believed in you the way you’d like to believe in yourself.”

Duncan Cox and Tess Benger in The Great Gatsby, Citadel Theatre/ Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre/ Grand Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

The production is a collaboration between the Citadel, the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, and the Grand Theatre (in London Ont.). And Cloran has assembled an excellent 12-actor cross-country cast for his production. Benger is captivating, both imperious and vulnerable, as the spoiled, brittle Daisy, whose voice according to Nick has a magical cadence to it. As Daisy’s swaggering husband Tom, Timothy Dowler-Coltman captures a brute energy that makes all his scenes edgy; as he explains “we’re the natural ruling class.” As the brisk, cool-as-ice golf pro Jordan Baker, Bailey Chin conjures an independent, formidably self-centred woman.  And as the Wilsons, the defeated, listless car mechanic George, and his bored and fretful wife Myrtle who’s Tom’s adulterous squeeze, Tom Keenan and Rochelle Laplante are vivid, too. The ensemble, including the amazingly versatile band leader Brendan Wall, take on an assortment of tasks to populate the narrative with idiosyncratic people.

How Gatsby’s plan, so long in the making, all unravels is, in the novel, a matter of many encounters. And so far at least from time to time, there’s a bits-and-pieces quality to the weave of present moments and flashbacks in the adaptation. The incorporation of a moment in the past when Gatsby’s prospects changed forever, thanks to his rescue of yachting man Dan Cody (Wall), seems pasted in, for example. The scenes involving Meyer Wolfsheim (Wall again), a  European with criminal connections (by reputation he fixed the 1919 World Series), aren’t smoothly integrated into the narrative either.

The look and sound, though, and Cloran’s stagecraft on a set dominated by stunning deco panels and lighted gorgeously by Hugh Conacher, make The Great Gatsby always fun to watch — and to listen to (sound design, composer, musical direction by Jocelyn Pankanea). Deanna Finnman’s costumes are dazzling. With a couple of odd exceptions this is not a production that lugs set pieces on and off; time and place are conjured by smart, theatrically stylized means. Maybe Gatsby is right: time can fly by. “Do try to keep up,” as Jordan says tartly to Nick. And we do.

And the famous finale observation, “and so we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past,” to a backdrop of dancers who seem more and more distant (choreographer Allison Plamondon), is a moment to cherish as you leave the theatre.

REVIEW

The Great Gatsby

Theatre: Citadel Theatre, Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Grand Theatre

Adapted by: Erin Shields, from The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Directed by: Daryl Cloran

Starring: Tess Benger, Bailey Chin, Duncan Cox, Timothy Dowler-Coltman, Richard Lee Hsi, Kristin Johnston, Tom Keenan, Ben Kuchera, Rochelle Laplante, Katherine Matlashewski, Sarah Richardson, Brendan Wall

Running: through Novl 25

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 790-425-1820