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Hitherto The Great Gatsby has been defined by the original  F Scott Fitzgerald novel and the 2013  Baz Luhrmann film.  For this production  which debuted earlier in the year at the Pitlochry Festival Theatre, Elizabeth Newman has adapted the original story for stage ,Sarah Brigham directs the results.

Director Brigham wrestles with the  a story which shows how wonderful bring rich is, but  interspersed with some sad and bad moments. Ivan Stott  recreates Jazz Age music showtunes without the awkward bit of attempting to write lyrics to match Fitzgerald’s original prose. The Jazz Age ,with its gangsters and bootleggers , as presented here by Brigham , lacks the sinister edge of Weimar Berlin, whilst eschewing the glossy froth of  Luhrmann its character dependent upon   the quality of the lead performances

The story is   set in 1922, the year that began with the publication of Ulysses and ended with The Waste Land. Its brevity and acuity is legendary, sensibly,  those attributes are to be seen in this new script.

Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby was first published exactly 100 years ago. Never at any point during the 1925 book’s near century in copyright did Fitzgerald or his Estate allow a musical adaptation .However the copyright expired in America two years ago and now there are two  US musical adaptations : Florence Welch’s Gatsby and one directed by Marc Bruni and this.

The film is a blueprint for the portrayal of glamour, excess and Jazz Age opulence. Jen McGinley’s  sumptuous set succeeds in shrinking that grand vision onto the Derby stage without losing any of the vibrancy of the period. The stage is split featuring two grand staircases  with a connecting balcony from which  the music is played.

The film is a blueprint for the portrayal of glamour, excess and Jazz Age opulence. Jen McGinley’s  imposing  set succeeds in shrinking that grand vision onto the Derby stage without losing any of the vibrancy of the period. The stage is split featuring two grand staircases  with a connecting balcony from which  the music is played.

Oraine Johnson swaggers and strolls  as Jay Gatsby, dancing with style, panache  and  confidence, suspended between chasing the future and longing for the past: the present means nothing to him. His downfall  movingly  unfolds.

 Fiona Wood and April Nerissa Hudson excel with their vocals. Wood is excellent as the long suffering  upwardly mobile wife  to  lothario husband Tom (Tyler Collins). David Rankine as writer and narrator  Nick is the vehicle through which events unfold, he does a seamless job drawing events  together.

Although the rags to riches story is the nub of proceedings, contemporaneously we have the Epstein story omnipresent as a cautionary tale of entitled bacchanalian excess and the trial of Sean Diddy Combs’  decadence as an unspoken  backdrop.

Wisely, Newman’s adaptation does not attempt  to redraft  Fitzgerald’s masterpiece as a musical rather than  novel, nor does she  seek to explore the dark underbelly of the source of all this wealth . Instead she offers a glittering  musical romance underpinned by the Tragedy of careless people.

 The finale elevates  the production onto another  level bringing together the holy trinity of Newman’s  fluid words, Brigham’s sharp  direction, and  David Rankine’s outstanding performance as Nick. His closing soliloquys bring the pathos of Shakespearean Tragedy at its best into the auditorium.

A hugely enjoyable evening. Runs until October 25th

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