The Great Gatsby Reviews Round-up – London Coliseum

"Feat of spectacle and seduction"

"F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic story of dashed American dreams becomes an impressive, glitzy romcom musical"

"This musical based on F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novel is a juggernaut of a show and as such it takes a while to get moving... For a few scenes it almost feels as if Marc Bruni’s production might stall. And then we meet Jay Gatsby (Jamie Muscato) and boy, are we rolling."

"Visually, the show is stunning. Paul Tate DePoo III’s scenic and projection design is all sumptuous Roaring Twenties, meticulous in its detail."

"Music, by Jason Howland, is more of a patchwork of styles. Broadway stock-in-trade melismatic vocal lines rub shoulders with moody jazz-age melodies"

"Post-interval, on the approach to the automotive denouement, Kait Kerrigan’s book gathers momentum and the musical hits full throttle. Show-stopping numbers begin to pile up, and Fitzgerald’s themes get some attention"

"It probably won’t please literary purists, but it will delight a broad audience, and even those resistant to the unashamedly corny will likely be won over by the breathtaking look and strident performances in this feat of spectacle and seduction."

"The stakes are high in the great Gatsby gamble — but does it pay off?"

"Stick with this musical makeover of F Scott Fitzgerald’s masterly novel — it’s worth the wait"

"... at first sluggish, finally persuasive, always technically dazzling Broadway musical version"

"Yet excellent though the cast turn out to be, Marc Bruni’s production is the star here."

"... in a far superior second half. Suddenly the show clears more space for production numbers — great tap dancing included — and starts feeling like its own thing."

"... when McCann sings the song Beautiful Little Fool, she makes Daisy’s tunnel vision feel both vividly selfish and like necessary self-preservation."

"Best of all is Muscato’s Gatsby. This phony gentleman is a secretly sensitive soul who can’t even launch into his big power ballad about Daisy without being interrupted. So the second half mixes its spectacle and its sadness to winning effect. The book is a masterpiece. The musical is a good attempt. But I liked it, old sport."

"A little empty beneath the razzmattaz"

"The award-winning Broadway musical version of Fitzgerald’s novel hits London as a lavish spectacle but lacking heart"

"In performance this Gatsby turns out to be a sleek, ravishingly designed ocean liner of a show, with enough musical oomph and vocal power to distract you from the hollowness at its heart."

"It’s staged with pizzaz by the original Broadway director/choreographer team of Marc Bruni and Dominique Kelley(YES). Strong performances from Frances Mayli McCann’s Daisy Buchanan and Amber Davies’s Jordan Baker make up for the insipidity of Jamie Muscato as the titular antihero and Corbin Bleu as our narrator, Nick Carraway."

"Seldom has this plot, and Gatsby’s miraculous self-reinvention, seemed more fantastical. The millionaire’s mansion, a blend of art deco and intimidating Metropolis modernism, seems to have been conjured out of the air, like a Disney palace."

"The novel’s subtle study of morality and power imbalances, particularly between the sexes, is flattened and coarsened. Still the show rolls over you like a juggernaut. The design is truly dazzling"

"Mayli McCann matches Moscato in richness, sailing forcefully over Daisy’s contradictions until her devastating closing number Beautiful Little Fool. Rachel Tucker brings both fire and crushed dignity to Tom Buchanan’s side-piece, mechanic’s wife Myrtle."

"This is a big, brash show that fills the cavernous Coliseum. If it’s also a little empty beneath the razzmatazz, perhaps that doesn’t matter."

"The Great Gatsby musical is vacuous - pretty costumes can't save it"

"It's lovely to look at, but those expecting a meaningful analysis of wealth and class are going to be disappointed"

"What it lacks (and it lacks a great deal) in meaningful exploration of the themes and ideas that have made this text a classic, it attempts to compensate for with bucketloads of Jazz Age razzle-dazzle. It might, in fact, be best to come to this show (book by Kait Kerrigan, music from Jason Howland and lyrics courtesy of Nathan Tysen) with little or no prior knowledge of the F Scott Fitzgerald original.

"Instead, Marc Bruni’s peppy production works best as a simple tale of thwarted love"

"The songs are pleasantly unmemorable, yet full credit must go to Muscato and McCann for their confident ability to belt them out mellifluously to one of London’s largest performance spaces."

"There’s little of the chilly majesty of the book in this show, but there are a lot of very pretty sequins."

"Dazzling, but not the greatest Gatsby"

"Verdict: A spectacle old sport"

"Marc Bruni's dazzling production of The Great Gatsby opened on Broadway last year and now – with a mostly British cast – bursts into life in the West End. But while the musical adaptation of F. Scott Fitzgerald's great American novel about money and class looks like a million dollars, the creators still struggle to overcome the essential problem of the work: none of the leading characters are likeable, not even narrator Nick Carraway (Corbin Bleu), who may not be nasty or vapid but is still (whisper it) a bit of a sap."

"Muscato captures the character's cool detachment, and has a beautiful singing voice in a production that sounds terrific (even if the songs are as ephemeral as the green lamp at the end of Daisy's dock). McCann and Rachel Tucker, as Tom's mistress Myrtle, also impress in their solo numbers."

"But while it may not fully engage one's emotions, this is a Show with a capital S. It looks fabulous. It has a talented ensemble for the big set pieces – and it offers a lot of bang for its (and your) buck."

"Luxuriously glitzy yet glib West End musical"

"Despite hosting the British premieres of Broadway classics like Guys and Dolls and Kiss Me, Kate, the Coliseum sometimes feels too grandiose for musicals…but not for The Great Gatsby... a maximalist staging by Marc Bruni that demonstrates where every penny of your ticket money went. The opulence of Paul Tate dePoo III’s Art Deco scenic and projection designs and Linda Cho’s costumes is matched by formidable musical theatre star power in the principal casting."

"Unfortunately, the central couple seems a little colourless compared to the supporting characters."

"Broadway star and High School Musical alumnus Corbin Bleu makes a delightful, heartfelt West End debut in what is really the leading role"

"The orchestrations by Kim Scharnberg and composer Howland, awash with real brass and strings, sound lush and full by current West End standards, although the easy-on-the-ear music itself is unremarkable and impeded by a muddy sound design."

"The singing is so fine that the workaday music and lyrics (“We have a date with fate / But dammit I can wait”) probably won’t bother many people."

"A physical production that marries computer-generated scenery and actual sets to form luxurious stage pictures, the bravura, if somewhat relentless, vocals and the sheer majestic size of the whole glittering shebang collectively bludgeon you into dazed submission."

"A crude, vulgar musical of Fitzgerald’s dark masterpiece"

"Like other interpretations before it, this take on the great Jazz Age novel pounces on the party vibe and misses almost everything else"

"A more ambitious creative team might have turned The Great Gatsby’s keening lyricism, elusive spirit and sheer tragic beauty to its advantage. Instead, we get a screechy clodhopping musical that amps up the Roaring Twenties clichés at the expense of anything Fitzgerald had to say about class, money and the scissoring chasms between appearances and reality."

"... Jamie Muscato, so brilliant in Natasha and Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812 at the Donmar, struggles to preserve Gatsby’s evasive, essentially unknowable soul. The only character who comes out well is Rachel Tucker’s vivacious Myrtle, whom Kerrigan gives a proper rounded story and who, in her final moments, strikes an unexpected poignant note."

"... credit is due to director Marc Bruni for imbuing that shrill Jazz Age party vibe with a certain degree of ugliness – Dominique Kelley’s Bob Fosse-stye choreography radiates forced jollity."

"Yet the overall effect is excessive in all the wrong places, amplified by Jason Howland’s hammer and tongs score that flattens out all possibility for nuance. Poor Fitzgerald would almost certainly have found yet more cause to grumble."

"Big, brash, noisy and one-dimensional"

"F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Gatsby is little more than a loner with a taste for yearning power ballads and a spot of tap-dancing"

"There are two kinds of Great Gatsby fans. The first cherish F. Scott Fitzgerald’s tale as an exquisite meditation on the Jazz Age version of the American Dream. The others are more interested in dressing up in fancy threads and quaffing champagne at retro parties. The composer Jason Howland, lyricist Nathan Tysen and director Marc Bruni have brought a musical to the London Coliseum that is aimed very much at the latter."

"Where the novel is concise, understated and allusive, this show — which opened on Broadway last year — is big, brash, noisy and oddly one-dimensional. Kait Kerrigan’s book flattens out the details of life among the gilded set of Long Island. It’s as if Fitzgerald’s prose had been transformed into a graphic novel printed in extra-large capital letters. It’s not the cast’s fault that they struggle to bring the characters to life."

"As the second act rumbles towards its melancholy conclusion, the songs grow ever more maudlin. By the time the revellers return for a reprise of Roaring On, the champagne has lost its sparkle."

"Ludicrously lavish, The Great Gatsby musical lacks a basic level of respect for F Scott Fitzgerald’s original"

"As Gatsby, Jamie Muscato brings stupendous vocals and a jarringly approachable goofiness to the most elusive of literary creations"

"... what Kait Kerrigan’s weirdly larky book and Marc Bruni’s ludicrously lavish production lack is a basic level of respect for F Scott Fitzgerald’s elegy for the Roaring Twenties, or an understanding of what makes it more than an excellent theme for a hen do."

"... Jason Howland’s score is a naked celebration of Broadway-style vocal virtuosity that lacks the subtlety, wit and lightness that defined 1920s musical theatre – Gatsby’s “For Her” is a stunner of a ballad, but would shine brighter if almost every song didn’t hit the same levels of belted-out fervour."

"There’s nothing inherently wrong with this kind of historical inauthenticity if it’s in service of some kind of artistic purpose. Here, though, the only real message (bar some featherlight commentary on sexual double standards) is that the era’s superficiality makes serious thought impossible: Nick’s famous final monologue is almost inaudible over the sounds of screeching revellers."

"As US public life enters an era of unprecedented crassness, it feels odd to drown out, rather than expose, Fitzgerald’s critique of this moneyed circle. Gold dresses are pretty, but greed isn’t good."

" What a swell party this ain’t"

"F Scott Fitzgerald’s classic jazz age novel ought to be the perfect basis for a musical, but no amount of Charlestons from a fine cast can put the fizz into this"

"There is a strong argument for turning F Scott Fitzgerald’s jazz-age critique of the American Dream into a musical, from the sound of the lavish parties at Jay Gatsby’s mansion to the natural lyricism in its prose. It does not transpose convincingly here, though not for the lack of size or volume."

"Under the direction of Marc Bruni, it starts big, in sound and look... But it has nowhere to go from there: with every ostrich-filled scene and iceberg-sized setting, designed by Paul Tate DePoo III, it appears more like a Las Vegas casino with bursts of lurid light and ever more showboating sets."

"The music by Jason Howland, and lyrics by Nathan Tysen, comprise cruise-liner material too, by turns trite, tinkly and bombastic, from the opening number, Roaring On, onwards. It is unfortunate, given the strong vocal capabilities of the cast."

"Fitzgerald’s central couple fizz with charisma on the page, lighting up every room with their smiles, but here they are smoothed to two dimensions... That is no fault of the cast – the mood is simply too perky, the pace brisk and breezy, the story’s heart subsumed by the mission to put on a high-octane musical."

"Fresh from Broadway, this production encapsulates the worst of peacockingly splashy entertainment – the kind whose soul has been suctioned out in the making."

"This Broadway hit is a vacuous attempt to bend Fitzgerald’s masterpiece into a by-the-numbers romantic tragedy – but at least it looks pretty"

"Never at any point during the 1925 book’s near century in copyright did Fitzgerald or his heirs allow a musical adaptation and you have to hand it to them: they were right."

"The Great Gatsby looks absolutely ravishing and will doubtless cater to those who see the book as a bling-encrusted parable of how being rich is awesome but also sometimes sad. Let’s not get all lit crit though. The biggest problem here is not so much how the creatives have gone about making a Great Gatsby musical, but rather that it only takes a few minutes to conclude that the very idea of a Great Gatsby musical is inherently flawed."

"The very worst thing you could do to it is give the characters songs that expand on their inner lives at length and make them easier to empathise with. You can probably guess where this is going... the musical’s efforts to vindicate Daisy speak of a general drive to prod and poke Fitzgerald’s story into a conventional tragic romance, something that leaves it sapped, confused and lacking edge."

"From the heartstoppingly beautiful opening projection of the West Egg lighthouse blinking balefully across the water, to the lavish, pyro-enhanced party scenes and the two vintage cars that trundle across the stage, it’s ravishing, one of those Broadway shows that really looks like a Broadway show."

"In the title role, Jamie Muscato gives by far the most engaging performance in the show. But his twitchy, neurotic Gatsby comes across more like an autistic tech bro than a working-class guy who sacrificed everything to reinvent himself as a rich guy."